


Love Brings You Home

by insideimfeelindirty



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Grounder Bellamy Blake, Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy, all my favourite tropes, and more to come - Freeform, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2018-12-11 22:33:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11723967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insideimfeelindirty/pseuds/insideimfeelindirty
Summary: The ceremony is surreal, like an out of body experience. She walks up a makeshift aisle, the crowd parting to watch her, to take her measure. She’s aware a priest of some sort says words that hush the crowd, but she can’t understand them. She throws a glance over her shoulder, where her mother is bleary eyed but stone faced. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly but she doesn’t interrupt or object. She knows their survival hinges on this.She turns back to the priest, barely glancing at the man next to her, but his presence feels overwhelming. His breathing is even, he doesn’t fidget like she suddenly realises she is. He smells a bit spicy, a little heavy. Foreign. She nearly jumps when he shifts on his feet and brushes against her arm, the heat of him searing her skin.Her eyes are firmly fixed ahead as the priest starts proceedings, as he chants prayers that she can’t decipher. She can only pick out certain words, and they all make her blood still in her veins.Death, fight, blood. If there is a word for love in trigedasleng she doesn't know it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is all my favourite tropes in one fic. That's it.  
> Canon divergent, so most of the things that happened in S1 and the start of S2 happened, just you know, without Bellamy.

 

Growing up, she never thought she would marry for love. Up on the Ark concerns were always more utilitarian, more businesslike. Get married, have your one allotted child, save your dreams for the generation lucky enough to make it down to Earth again.

 

Well, here she was, and Earth was nothing like those dreams. 

 

“Are we agreed?” Lexa’s cool, almost bored voice commands the room. It’s almost too cool, too controlled. So casual it is anything but.

 

Kane turns to her, quizzically, looking for final confirmation. Her mother stands stiff and tight lipped behind him, her face tired and worn. There is no other option, none that she could live with. None that would be anything but selfish. She nods her head once, tightening her jaw. 

 

“Skaikru agree to the alliance, Commander,” Kane says, voice clipped, barely containing the desperation just below the surface. 

 

“Good,” Lexa concludes, her eyes fluttering away, refusing to meet her glance. “We’ll start at sundown.”

 

With a final flourish she gets up from her dais, nodding briefly to the man at her side. To the man she’d just agreed to marry.

 

For the first time since the negotiations started she throws him a quick glance, scanning him from head to toe, taking in the tight jaw, the broad tense shoulders. And then the eyes. The dark, hard eyes boring into her, sending chills down her spine. 

 

She quickly casts her head down, but she can feel his eyes resting heavily on her back as Kane and her mother escort her out of the room.

 

* * *

 

 

She is scrubbed and dressed according to every grounder custom, or so she assumes. No one really bothers to explain anything to her. She is simply guided into a room an unceremoniously stripped naked, any protest she tries to make brushed off with brusque guttural sounds in a language she still only has a rudimentary understanding of. 

 

She catches a glimpse of herself in a dark, stained mirror and inhales sharply. She barely recognises her own reflection. The skin stretches tightly over her ribs, her stomach is hollow, her cheeks sunken. Gone is the roundness she’d had and occasionally hated up on the Ark and would give anything to have back now. There are bruises on her arms and legs, tiny cuts on her hands and face. There are deep, dark circles under her eyes that still doesn't make her look as tired as she feels. 

 

She lets the grounder women preen and prod her, lets them carefully scrub her clean and try to untangle the persistent knots in her hair. It feels nice, having hands on her that are soft and undemanding. She’s gotten so used to violence, to the harsh realities of Earth and surviving everything it threw at them that she can’t even remember the last time anyone put their hands on her in anything other than malice or desperation. 

 

Since day one, since the dropship landed, she’s been fighting. She’s lost more than she’s won, buried more friends than she cares to dwell on. There are just around twenty of them left now, when the number should’ve been five times higher. Wells was never good at the war stuff, and Finn only wanted to avoid fighting. She could never manage to get everyone on her side, and after the grounders had picked them off like flies they’d had no choice but to plead for a peace treaty with Anya, no matter the cost. No matter how many dead friends she’d felt like she’d betrayed. 

 

She looks down on her hands as the grounder women carefully remove the grime under her nails, and she could’ve sworn she can still see flecks of blood on them. They smear something soft and thick over them, honey maybe, trying to soften the callouses. She’d buried each one of her friends with her own hands. Wells had been the tenth. Finn had been one of the last. 

 

Her hair is braided with meticulous precision, smears of thick, dark paint drawn across her cheeks and eyelids. Soft leather and fur is tied to her body with complicated knots she already knows she’ll have trouble undoing. As they transform her into a grounder bride, she lets the hopelessness of the situation finally grip her. 

 

When the Ark came down, the precarious treaty she had pieced together with Anya became even more unstable, and the few resources they had managed to beg, borrow and steal had dwindled to almost none. Outsmarted, outnumbered and unused to their new home, even their guns and technology had been futile against Trikru and a new world working against them. Without this alliance none of Skaikru will survive. The massacre of their hunting party, _Finn’s hunting party_ , just a few weeks back told her that much. She shudders, trying to shake the image of vacant, lifeless eyes in a too familiar blood spattered face.

 

Her dressers turn her back towards the mirror and take a step back, clearly pleased with their work. She scans herself, taking in the unfamiliar clothes, the elaborate hair. 

 

_Skaikru Princess_ , they’d called her. 

 

She’d heard the whispers when she’d entered Polis. She’d scoffed at the title, but looking at the strange reflection in the mirror it makes her gut clench. Lexa had insisted it'd be her to complete the alliance. She hadn’t looked her in the eye when she said it, she’d looked right past her, stone faced and determined. In her eyes, in the eyes of every grounder, she was the leader of Skaikru. The burden of this alliance would fall to her, and her alone. 

 

* * *

 

The ceremony is surreal, like an out of body experience. She walks up a makeshift aisle, the crowd parting to watch her, to take her measure. She’s aware a priest of some sort says words that hush the crowd, but she can’t understand them. She throws a glance over her shoulder, where her mother is bleary eyed but stone faced. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly but she doesn’t interrupt or object. She knows their survival hinges on this. 

 

She turns back to the priest, barely glancing at the man next to her, but his presence feels overwhelming. His breathing is even, he doesn’t fidget like she suddenly realises she is. He smells a bit spicy, a little heavy. Foreign. She nearly jumps when he shifts on his feet and brushes against her arm, the heat of him searing her skin. 

 

Her eyes are firmly fixed ahead as the priest starts proceedings, as he chants prayers that she can’t decipher. She can only pick out certain words, and they all make her blood still in her veins. _Death, fight, blood_. If there is a word for love in trigedasleng she doesn't know it.

 

The priest produces a long, thin knife, the blade glittering in the light from the candles covering every surface of the throne room. She jerks back on impulse as he lowers the blade and hands it to the dark haired man next to her, but he seems unperturbed. He simply accepts the dagger, before calmly cutting a deep line into the palm of his hand. Blood trickles down his dark skin, drops hitting the floor with a soft splat. 

 

He turns towards her then, his eyes meeting hers for the first time. They’re dark, a little narrow, almost questioning and she forgets to breathe as they lock her in. After a beat he flutters his eyelashes, shakes his head a little and thrusts the knife towards her, blade facing away from her. He motions for her to follow his example, stopping her when she goes for the wrong hand, his thumb accidentally brushing over hers as he places the blade in the right hand. A short, sharp shock runs through her, making the hairs on her neck stand up, but she forges ahead, hissing as she cuts a thick gash into her palm. 

 

The priest places her hand in his, twining an elaborately decorated leather strap around their clasped hands, their blood mixing, their union confirmed. There is another blessing, she thinks, satisfied murmurs behind her and then someone is singing a hauntingly beautiful song and she guesses that’s probably it. Her palm throbs and stings, the heat of his hand holding hers nearly unbearable. Married. Allied. _Safe._

 

“What’s your name?” she manages to whisper to him as he leads her out of the throne room, muted chatter exploding around them. She never thought to ask when it was all theoretical, when it was a negotiation and not a relationship.

 

“I’m Bellamy,” he says, voice gruff but his english perfect. 

* * *

 

 

Her new husband is a general, she thinks. If she understood the grounder word correctly. He certainly looks like a warrior, his eyes sharp and focused on his surroundings as they take a seat at the banquet table, hands still tied together. The way his eyes flit over every weapon, every Ark guard uniform in the room sends a thrill down her spine. She’s seen that look before, been on the receiving end of it. It has almost always ended in bloodshed and more graves to dig for friends. 

 

She takes a deep breath, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, her hand sweating and stinging inside his large, rough palm. She can feel the weight of every single pair of eyes in the room resting on her. Watching. Measuring. 

 

“What’s the matter, Princess?” he mutters in her ear, his lips brushing against her hair. “Isn’t this supposed to be the happiest day of your life?”

 

His voice is deep and there’s a mean edge to it that makes her jerk back and face him. There is a glint in his eyes, a challenge of sorts, his mouth turned up into a slight smirk in one corner. 

 

“I’m ecstatic,” she snaps, her own voice unrecognisably cold and hard. 

 

She yanks her hand back but the leather strap still has them bound together, so they end up jostling back and forth, neither of them backing down. His eyes are full of ire as they wrangle for control, and it’s only Lexa’s annoyed cough that makes them stop. She takes the two of them in with a raised eyebrow and she can feel her cheeks flush with heat.

 

It’s hard after that, to sit up there at the head table and pretend like she’s happy about the alliance, about this marriage. It’s hard to pretend like this isn’t anything but a forced surrender. She throws her new husband a few glances, notes the wild, black curls and the healing cuts that run like deep tire tracks across freckled, dark skin. She takes in the dark bruises on the back of the hand that is still tied to hers, the weary look on his face as he studiously avoids her gaze.

 

She sighs deeply and throws her mother a glance further down the table. Abby sends her a small, encouraging smile but it irritates her more than comforts her right now. She’s going to have to live with this hard, angry man next to her. She’s going to have to live with his people. People who were her enemies just days ago. She lets her eyes wander up the table and accidentally meet another pair of hard eyes, staring and challenging. The girl they belong to has equally elaborate braids as her, black paint around her eyes that make her them gleam just like the multitude of sharp knives strapped to her chest. Her mouth opens wide in a feral grin as she holds her gaze. 

 

The intensity of that stare makes her swallow down the wine in her cup in thick gulps, makes her pick at her food so she doesn’t have to meet those eyes again. It’s been a while since she had anything this substantial in her belly and she allows herself to enjoy it for a moment. If nothing else, her people are eating well tonight. They’re not starving, they’re not freezing and they’re not dying. She bears it so they don’t have to. 

 

The party drags on, the atmosphere turning from cautious reverence to something resembling raucous festivity, cups of wine being raised towards the happy couple with alarming frequency. Her arm is aching from being attached to Bellamy all night, her head pounding with the wine she is unaccustomed to. Across the room there are shouts in trigedasleng which she doesn’t understand, requests or encouragements, it’s hard to tell. Bellamy leans away from her to listen to the quiet commands Lexa is muttering in his ear. She’s too far away to catch any of the words. 

 

Preoccupied by the excited babble that seems to be rising in the room, she has no chance of escape when Bellamy suddenly leans over her and pins her to her chair with a strong hand on her shoulder. His mouth is on hers before she can even open it to protest, his lips hot and demanding. It’s not a short kiss. It’s not a careful, polite, impersonal kiss. It’s a long, consuming, insistent kiss. His tongue slides between her lips and find hers, probing and intense. It’s impossible to stay passive, every swipe of his tongue coaxing hers out, making her reciprocate. Somewhere, beyond the pulsing of blood in her ears, there are loud cheers and wolf whistling and at the back of her mind it occurs to her she should be embarrassed. It’s hard to care when his breath is hot against her skin and the glide of his tongue sets a fire deep, deep in her gut. When he finally releases her his eyes are dark and unreadable.

 

“Now you’re ecstatic,” he mutters, face close to hers so no one can hear. 

 

When he pulls back, the room erupts in cheers and no doubt jeers. She’s glad she can’t understand them. There is a small smirk on his lips, but his eyes quickly return to that hard, focused glare as he turns away from her like nothing happened. Behind him she catches the look on Lexa's face. Her face is a little flustered, like she’s ashamed. But she schools her expression into something hard, her jaw jutting forward, her chin tilting upwards. And it clicks into place. She is showing off the spoils of war. If it wasn’t clear already, the whole room, all the clans, her own people, all now know without reservation that Skaikru is under Lexa's thumb.

* * *

 

 

She almost groans out loud when Bellamy finally unties the knots that bind their hands together. She stretches and clenches her hand, grimaces at the gash in her palm smeared with streaks of his and her blood. He doesn’t say anything, just observes her quietly, his face blank. 

 

“What the hell was that?” she hisses, because they are alone and she can drop any pretence. 

 

“What was what?” 

 

He feigns ignorance as if he didn’t just display dominance over her in the most public and intimate way. He turns his back on her then, moving over to a bowl of steaming hot water to clean his cut. 

 

“The kiss!” 

 

She doesn’t even try to to mask the anger in her voice. An alliance is what they had been promised. Access to resources, technology, knowledge. Peace between the sky and the ground and a chance at survival and prosperity for them all. At least on paper. Everyone at Camp Jaha already knew the alternative was unthinkable. But she had at least expected the grounders to hold up the illusion that this was something they needed too.

 

“It was just a kiss,” he shrugs, back still turned, voice overly casual. “It’s a wedding after all.”

 

“It was a display of power and you know it.”

 

No reaction. Rage roils in her gut, her face burning hot and her fists clenching.

 

“You practically pissed on me, marking your territory.”

 

That finally gets him. He turns on his heel, levelling that dark, hard glare at her again. 

 

“You are my territory,” he snaps, closing the distance between them and forcing her to take a small step back so she can keep her eyes on his. She hates him for it, for making her give even an inch of ground away. “You’re my wife. Everything you are is mine. Your people are my people. And now everyone knows it.”

 

“I’m doing this for _my_ people,” she hisses back, jutting her chin up and getting in his face. “I am no one’s property, and neither are they."

 

“It’s supposed to be an honour, you know,” he says, cool and collected but there’s an edge to his voice. A warning. “Marrying me. I was never going to marry just anyone. Certainly not someone who fell out of the sky, _by accident_ , and survived, by _accident_.”

 

“We didn’t _have_ to make this deal you know,” she lies smoothly, only intent on wiping that smug look off his face. “We have guns. We have bombs.”

 

“And you would’ve all been dead before you had a chance to use them,” he snorts, his face now so close she can feel his breath sweep across her face. 

 

“You’re lucky,” he says quietly when she doesn’t have an answer to that. “You’re lucky you’re mine. It means you get to live.”

 

He stares at her, not bothering to pretend, not hiding his contempt. He’s so close she can practically taste him again, her mind involuntarily flitting back to that kiss earlier. Her eyes drop to his lips before she can stop them, and he steps back smirking, breaking the moment.

 

“Thought so,” he tuts, mostly to himself. 

 

He turns, starting to strip off his jacket and suddenly one of the intricate metal bangles they put on her is in her hand. She flings it at his head, hard and precise, and it hits him square on with a satisfying thump. He whirls on her, bewildered and...  _amused_. 

 

“Brave Princess,” he chuckles, eyes glittering, and he is absolutely infuriating. 

 

He carries on taking his jacket off as if nothing happened, though he picks up the bangle and carefully places it on the nightstand. It’s only then she really registers her surroundings. It’s not just a bedroom they’re in, it’s a wedding suite. She vaguely considered that she might be confronted with sharing quarters with her new husband at some point, but the politics of the alliance had occupied her mind. She hadn’t really had time to focus on the practicalities of a marriage. 

 

The entire room is covered in candles and flowers. There are bowls filled with water, rose petals and floating candles at the foot of the large bed. There’s a large canopy of flower garlands over the bed, big red and orange flowers tied to the posts, more petals scattered across the furs covering the mattress. There are so many candles in the room that there is no logical explanation for the goosebumps that erupt on her skin. Sometimes the beauty of Earth knocks the wind out of her and for a brief moment she forgets that beauty can be deceptive, sometimes deadly.

 

Her husband seems unaffected, he continues to take off his clothes like she’s not in the room, revealing hard, dark skin and even more freckles. She turns away to give herself a moment to process, dipping her hands in the rose scented water to clean away the blood on her hand and the paint on her face. By the time she turns back he’s under the furs, mostly covered and that makes it easier to say what she wants to say.

 

“I’m not sleeping with you.”

 

He just looks at her, his eyes roving up and down her body, lingering purposefully on her breasts. Flush rises on her chest and in her cheeks but she juts her chin out and stalks over to the bed, refusing to let him intimidate her. 

 

“Move,” she commands, sliding under the furs next to him, making sure there is a good foot and a half of space between them. “And don’t touch me if you want to keep those hands.”

 

“You know, you might feel a bit more comfortable if you took off those clothes,” he says, teasing. But he’s not wrong. The candles in combination with the furs and the leather covering her body makes for a sweaty combination.

 

“I don’t know how to get them off,” she admits, voice low, before quickly adding “All this grounder gear is so damn complicated.”

 

“I can help you with that.” He’s risen up on one elbow, looking down on her, eyebrow slightly raised. 

 

“I’d rather die of heatstroke,” she huffs, sending him a deathly glare. A rose petal flutters up as she huffs, floating in the candlelight and landing on her cheek.  

 

“Whatever the hell you want, Princess.” 

 

He turns over and is asleep within minutes, leaving her to squirm uncomfortably in the heat, listening to the even puffs of his breath. She finally manages to loosen the knots on her skirt and slides it off, praying the movement doesn’t wake her new husband. She falls asleep hours later, after staring up at the flower canopy over her head and running over every step, every move that has brought her here. Sleeping next to a man that was her mortal enemy just a few days ago, she somehow sleeps better than she has in months, only because despite her own discomfort, she knows her people are safe.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Welcome home, Princess,” he says, no hint of a smile on his face. 
> 
> He peels off his armour, moving around like she’s not even there. He’s different here than he was in Polis, different alone with her now than he was on their wedding night. Gone is the cocky arrogance, instead there is a weary resignation in him, like the reality of the marriage has sunk in for him too. 
> 
> “Home, sweet home,” she mutters to herself, sinking down on a fur lined bench, taking in the foreign surroundings, taking in the fact that she’s stuck here with him. This was the dream. Living on Earth, living in peace, doing more than just surviving. She had forgotten that nightmares are dreams too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa holy hell, I did not mean for this update to take me 2 months, but life has been seriously hectic. Must do better! 
> 
> Thank you so much for all your support so far, please let me know what you think!

The journey back to her new home is long and tedious. Each jolt and lurch her horse makes has her wincing in pain, even with the slow pace. She’s fairly certain the pace is to accommodate her, inexperienced to riding as she is. Every single one of Bellamy’s small group of warriors and emissaries look bored and restless, some throwing her glowering looks and mumbling under their breaths in foreign words but with unmistakable meaning. 

 

When they’d left two days ago her mother’s eyes had been wet and her voice shaky as they hugged goodbye. She’d clashed with her mother constantly since the Ark came down, hadn’t ever managed to forgive her completely for her father’s death. But the desperate, almost terrified look on her mother’s face as she pulled back from the hug had made her wrap her arms around her neck tight as a vice, wishing, somehow, that her mother could protect her from this. Raven had hugged her just as fiercely, pushed a radio into her hands and told her to stay in touch. She had handed over her gun, a provision of the alliance, and turned to get up on the waiting horse, feeling like she was turning her back on her people, her life, her entire future. 

 

She’d caught Lexa’s eye as she rode off, her face a blank mask, although her eyes flickered with some emotion before she turned and disappeared back into the tower. She'd swallowed hard, the lump in her throat growing with every step her horse brought her away from Polis, from her people.

 

“She was never gonna marry you,” Bellamy had said, coming to a slow walk beside her. 

 

His eyes had been calculating, waiting for a response, a reaction. Maybe a betrayal of emotion. She’d schooled her face into a blank expression, willed herself not to give anything away. She’d shrugged her shoulders casually, as if the thought had never entered her mind at all. 

 

“She’s the commander,” he’d carried on, when he hadn’t managed to get a rise out of her. “Showing preference towards Skaikru would have been catastrophic.”

 

He’d carried on riding next to her, keeping his eye on her, waiting for a crack in her expression. She hadn’t given him the satisfaction. She’d willed the images of soft lips against hers and green eyes watching her closely to disappear from her mind. She’d jutted out her chin in defiance and spurred her horse on so she could slip past him. He’d only chuckled lowly, and then kicked his horse into a brisk trot and disappeared to the front of the group. 

 

He hadn’t said two words to her since, and she’d been stuck somewhere between relief and annoyance the entire trip.

 

* * *

 

In fact, no one had tried to talk to her at all since they left Polis, other than to point at trees to tie her horse to, bushes to squat behind or clear patches of forest floor to sleep on. She wasn’t sure any of them spoke english. She could still easily guess what they thought of her, of their leader’s new wife. The most passive ones would limit themselves to condescending sneering whenever she would struggle to get up on her horse or when she got her radio out to tell Raven in rushed, hushed tones that she was doing ok. Others would downright hiss at her whenever she approached them, almost throw food onto her plate and then hurl what she presumed was insults at her in trigedasleng. None of them made her skin crawl like the girl who had stared her down at the wedding, however. 

 

Her face was all sharp angles and fierce anger glinted in her eyes. She never addressed her, but she could feel her eyes resting heavily on her almost constantly, like a hawk watching its prey. At night, when the chatter died down and the fire was reduced to embers, she would still sit there watching her, sharpening her knife against a rock without taking her eyes off her. The knife, she had noticed, was nothing like the ceremonial knife she had used to solidify their alliance, no elaborate decorations or gilding. This blade was designed to kill, and by the faint traces of red she'd caught a glimpse of on the handle, she'd assumed it has already been used for that exact purpose. 

 

So she barely sleeps. She dozes restlessly, her hand wound tightly around the hilt of her own hunting knife, the one she was reluctantly allowed to keep. Her dreams are more like hallucinations, of bloody hands reaching for her and grabbing at her, tearing at her skin. Her own hands are covered in mud and ash, the stench of burning hair and rotting flesh so vivid she can still smell it when she jerks awake. She sinks her hands into the ground beneath her, seeking comfort in that solid, inescapable safety it still represents. Life on Earth. The ultimate goal, no matter the sacrifice. 

 

When she staggers to her feet on the third morning, every muscle in her body groaning in protest, she feels light headed, almost delirious from exhaustion. She follows the silent example of the warriors around her and readies herself for departure, but trying to stay alert and vigilant for so long has dulled her senses. Before she knows it, she’s knocked into someone, dropping her bedroll in the process. 

 

“Touch me again, and I’ll cut those hands off.”

 

The voice is all tempered rage, but it still takes her two blinks of an eye to realise it’s coming from the girl with steel in her eyes. Her english is perfect. She swallows, knowing with peculiar certainty that apologising would be the wrong thing to do. So she stares back as if she’s staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, terrified but defiant. 

 

The girl backs down, and it’s only when she turns and walks away that she notices the angry red welts that run down her neck and down under her leather jacket. Burns, she realises. It makes her stomach roil. 

 

* * *

 

“So you met my sister,” Bellamy’s voice rumbles, startling her enough she has to grip the mane of her horse tightly so she doesn’t fall off. 

 

It’s been hours since they left the camp, so she doesn’t catch his meaning.

 

“Your sister?”

 

“Octavia,” he clarifies, as if the name should ring a bell. 

 

He finally nods his head towards the girl that for once isn’t staring her down. The one with the braids. And the knife. And the burns. The one who looks at her with pure, undiluted hatred. 

 

“Yeah,” she confirms, trying to hide the shock on her face and the surprise in her voice. “She’s very… welcoming.”

 

He doesn’t chuckle at that, or even smirk, he just holds her gaze evenly, face unreadable. 

 

“She was there that day, you know. At your camp, when you killed 300 of our men. With… fire.”

 

His voice catches on the last word, like he doesn’t understand how they did it. She’s not sure if it’s the technology he doesn’t understand or the choice itself. She swallows hard, looks away from him for a moment to blink away the emotion that is forming in her eyes. 

 

“It was the only choice,” she mutters, but she chokes on the explanation, on the why. She can still taste the ash in her mouth, the smell of charred remains regularly haunting her in her dreams. She suddenly feels the weight of every pair of eyes in the group on her. 

 

“I was there too.”

 

He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t explain how he managed to escape without a single mark on his body, unlike his sister. He keeps riding next to her in silence, a silence that feels weighted with bad blood and too-recent history. Like their hostility has been forced to come to a complete stop, but neither of them know how to slow down and are slamming against an invisible barrier. 

 

After a while, he rides ahead, telling her quietly that they are nearly there. Her hand automatically flies to the knife strapped to her thigh, and he notices, dragging his eyes up her thigh and up to her eyes. She swears she can see clouds behind the dark globes of his eyes.

 

She is acutely aware that this alliance is one in name only. 

 

* * *

 

The closer they get to the village, the more relaxed the group gets. She sees shoulders loosen and eyes become less watchful, even some smiles across otherwise hard faces. Octavia doesn’t loosen her rigid posture one bit, and neither does Bellamy. His jaw remains tense, his eyes alert, no amount of leather armour hiding his taut muscles. He reminds her of a strung bow, poised to kill at the slight jerk of a finger, set to explode at the blink of an eye. He’s all controlled chaos, brute strength barely contained. He makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. 

 

He rides next to her as they approach the village, probably as a show of unity, probably something she should be thankful for. Instead, her gut clenches and every fibre of her being tells her to turn her horse around and run in the opposite direction, to get as far away from him as she can. Instead, she forces herself to stay calm, forces ice into her veins and stone into her stare, tilts her jaw up and carries on. She wasn’t born a warrior like him, she became one by accident, and then necessity. This too was a necessity, this marriage, a matter of life and death like every other choice she’d been forced to make since she arrived on the ground. 

 

They turn a bend in the narrow path and below them a cluster of roofs start to appear, smoke rising from chimneys. She tenses as she takes in the size of the place, sees the solid buildings, the apparently thriving community. It’s a version of what she’d been fighting for all this time. She sees young babies wrapped in furs, old, crooked elders resting wearily against door frames, small children stumbling towards them with unchecked glee. She sees generations that are all but extinct amongst her people since they landed. She sees everything she’d hoped they could achieve, hopes they still can. 

 

She’s not sure what she expected of Bellamy’s village, of her new home, but what eventually greets her isn’t it. She didn’t expect it to feel so familiar, the eyes that greet them silently counting heads and then softening in relief once the right number has been reached. The desperation in in their faces, the fierceness of their reunions, it’s all too familiar. The devastation simmers right below the surface, it’s obvious that having every warrior return in once piece is as rare here as it was at the Dropship. She tastes ashes in her mouth again, swallowing around the hard lump of guilt lodged in her throat. She’s the reason their faces are streaked with worry, the reason their reunions are so precious.

 

Bellamy eventually gets off his horse when the children flock around him and all but block his path. She hesitates for a moment, still fighting the instinct to run. She takes in the crowd around them, the relieved faces that turn to suspicion and then anger when they shift their focus to her, the sharp weapons that hang from almost every hip. There’s so many of them, so many more than she ever imagined. So many more than they ever could have taken on. She feels every one of their eyes on her as she finally summons up the courage to dismount her horse. Bellamy just raises an eyebrow to her and jerks his head for her to follow him. 

 

The crowd follows them part of the way, eyes fixated on her, children pointing and whispering amongst each other. Wanheda, they whisper, fear in their eyes. Bellamy either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, striding ahead without checking if she’s still behind him. He knows she’s got nowhere to go. After a while the crowds break off, everyone returning to their own houses, the whispers dying down. Bellamy leads her up a narrow path to the building perched at the highest point of the village, grander than the simple metal and wood cottages they’ve passed. Cracked and broken pillars frame the solid wood door, the neat metal letters of an old sign hang above it, the “ARY” the only letters left. Inside there is a grand hall of sorts, wooden benches arranged in a semi circle, each of the walls lined with old book cases. Her eyes grow wide at all the books that still fill the shelves, such a precious commodity up in space. 

 

Bellamy gestures for her to follow, passing through the hall and behind another large wooden door there are smaller, more sparse living quarters. It’s simple but sound, reminding her a little of the apartment she shared with her parents on the Ark. Bellamy puts his sword down on the table with a loud bang, startling her a little. 

 

“Welcome home, Princess,” he says, no hint of a smile on his face. 

 

He peels off his armour, moving around like she’s not even there. He’s different here than he was in Polis, different alone with her now than he was on their wedding night. Gone is the cocky arrogance, instead there is a weary resignation in him, like the reality of the marriage has sunk in for him too. 

 

“Home, sweet home,” she mutters to herself, sinking down on a fur lined bench, taking in the foreign surroundings, taking in the fact that she’s stuck here with him. This was the dream. Living on Earth, living in peace, doing more than just surviving. She had forgotten that nightmares are dreams too. 

 

* * *

 

She wakes up the next day sore and hot. Too hot. It’s bewildering, feeling the kind of warm she hasn’t since she came down to Earth. She kicks at the furs covering her, tries to escape the stifling heat, but there is something pushing her down, something pinning the furs in place. It takes her a while, takes a few blinks of her eyes and a couple of wipes at her brow before it clicks. Bellamy. 

 

She hadn’t been surprised that there had only been one bed in his living quarters but she had balked a little at the size of the bed when she’d realised just how close they would have to sleep. She’d considered throwing her bedroll on the floor even though every part of her body hurt, but he’d shot her that look. It was a look that was half condescension, half challenge and it had made her chuck her bedroll away in defiance and climb into bed with all her clothes still on. He’d chuckled lowly and crowded in behind her. She had stayed stiffly on her side facing away from him until she heard his breath even out. She’d fallen asleep hours later from sheer exhaustion. 

 

Now her defiance has come back to bite her in the ass, the clothes and furs far too warm for the late spring weather. Bellamy’s arm is slung around her waist, heavy in his unconsciousness. She flushes at the closeness, at the body heat radiating from him, at the heavy headiness of his scent. She squirms under his arm, tries to escape his grasp without stirring him but he’s strong even in his sleep, the muscles tensing beneath dark skin scattered with freckles and the faint silver lines of old scars. She finally manages to push him off, she has to put some effort into it and she’s sure he’s going to wake up, but his breathing just hitches before it returns to the soft puffs she’s gotten used to. He sleeps like the world has drained him of everything he’s got. 

 

She crawls out of bed, stiff and uncomfortable, pangs of hunger twisting her stomach. She pushes her discomfort aside, eager to make good on the one thought she’s been filled with since she arrived at the village; to call Raven. She rifles through her small pack, but the radio is not there. She wipes the sleep from her eyes, confused, checks again. Still not there. She checks her bed roll, against her better judgement, but comes up empty. She checks her pack again. Nothing. She scans the room, rifles through the furs and throws on the makeshift couch, looks through cupboards with ramshackle cooking utensils and closets stuffed with armour and leather and an alarming amount of sharp weapons but the radio is nowhere to be found. 

 

She rounds on her sleeping husband, shoving him hard, but he barely creases his brow. 

 

“Bellamy!”

 

Her voice is sharp and rough but he finally stirs, only just.

 

“Where’s my radio?” she demands, as soon as he cracks an eye open. 

 

“Hmh?” 

 

His voice is sleepy and slow, taking far too long to react to her challenge.

 

“My radio, Bellamy,” she snaps, impatient. “Did you take my goddamn radio?”

 

He closes his eye again, pulling up the furs around his bare chest, his mouth pressed into a thin line.

 

“It’s too early to fight, Princess.”

 

She shoves him again, feeling the anger bubbling in her chest, feeling her face flush with heat. 

 

“Where the hell is it?”

 

He cracks his eyes open again, both of them this time, sighing deeply as he realises she’s not going to let him sleep. 

 

“You can have it back when you’re not a risk to this village,” he replies calmly, with high-minded patience like he’s talking to a child.

 

“How am I a risk to you?” she gapes, incredulous. “I’m outnumbered, unarmed and I have no idea where I am. I’m practically a prisoner here!”

 

That gets to him. His eyes alight with fury, his jaw sets in a hard line as he throws the furs back and gets up to face her. 

 

“You’re my wife,” he snarls, looming over her, his face close enough that she can feel his hot breath on her skin. “You’re not a prisoner.”

 

“Then give me my radio back,” she counters, squaring up to him. 

 

“You really think I’m gonna invite Skaikru and your guns to my front door?”

 

His voice is hard, but there is a crack in it, betraying his real feelings. That carefully harnessed control is finally showing the merest hint of a chip.

 

“They... - _we_ , are bound by the alliance,” she seethes, stepping even closer to him, feeling the ringlets on his head brushing against her. “You have nothing to be concerned about.”

 

“You’ve killed several hundred of my people, you almost killed my sister. You nearly killed _me_.” He lets the words drop like hard stones, each landing with a punch to her gut. Ashes stick to her tongue again, smoke stinging her eyes. "Tell me again how I’m supposed to trust you.” 

 

She tries to stop the wobble of her bottom lip, has to bite down on it to get it under control. His eyes are wide, his nostrils flared, pure emotion simmering right below the surface. They stare each other down, bad blood pulsing between them. Finally she leans back on her heels, backing down a fraction.

 

“This alliance is a sham,” she bites at him, her cheeks flushed with anger. “I’m nothing but a goddamn trophy."

 

“You were a problem the commander needed to solve. She handed that problem over to me.”

 

His voice is cool again, restrained. Infuriating. 

 

“You can have the radio back when I can trust you won’t use that knife you go to bed with on me.”

 

He glances down to her leg where her hunting knife is still strapped to her thigh, the once piece of security she has left now that he’s taken the radio from her. She follows his eyes down, and it’s only when she snaps them back up she realises he’s entirely naked in front of her. 

 

She recoils back, averts her eyes from the masses of dark, smooth skin filling her vision. She bumps into a bench, but hardly notices the dull pain in her leg or the clatter of whatever she has managed to knock off it. 

 

“Something the matter, Princess?” he asks, and she can hear the smirk in his voice even if she can’t see it. 

 

“I can’t argue with you when you’re naked!” 

 

She turns on her heel and storms out of the room, radio instantly forgotten. Behind her she thinks she can hear him mutter _good to know_.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Peace isn't always possible."
> 
> He is too much heat and reaction, like a pot of water waiting to boil over and cause destruction in his wake. 
> 
> "War isn't always inevitable."
> 
> She is cool thought, too scarred by the death she has held between her own hands to not make every agonizing decision count. 
> 
> "I can see why Lexa wanted you to be a part of this alliance," he says and she can see why Lexa wanted him to be the other half. 
> 
> Silence stretches between them and it doesn't feel like the usual quiet that comes from having nothing to say to each other. Instead it feels like she has too much to say, and it shouldn't be this easy between them. It's too much of a betrayal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me forever again, sorry about that, but I've had some unexpected health issues to deal with and also I somehow ended up writing FAR TOO MUCH PLOT jfc! I'm really sorry about the extensive grounder politics in this chapter but hopefully I made up for it at the end. Gotta set the stage etc etc.  
> Anyways, thank you for your patience again, and thanks for all your support. It really makes me want to write faster for you when I read all your comments.

 

She’s never been good at being alone. Those months in the skybox, where there was no distinction between night and day and time was only ever counting down to her death, those months were the closest she had ever come to losing herself. Even with every impossible decision she had to make and life she had to end since she came down to Earth, she had never felt so at odds with herself, so trapped by her own mind as then. Until now. 

 

There is no lock on her door, no handcuffs, no roll calls, lights out or random inspections. She’s not imprisoned by physical barriers or armed guards, but the restrictions are just as tangible. There are eyes on her wherever she goes, the still aching wound in the palm of her hand a constant reminder of an alliance forged in blood. She clenches her hand tightly, feeling the blood thump in her hand. This is a prison of her own making, one she agreed to so her people could not just survive, but thrive. 

 

She inhales the crisp morning air, feels the sun rise and heat her breath so it doesn’t linger like smoke beyond her lips anymore. Spring is already here, a false promise of new life and a new world when the blood isn’t even dry beneath her fingernails yet. She’s taken to escaping the small quarters she shares with her husband in the early hours of the morning so she can sit outside their house and look down on a home she doesn’t recognise, and one that won’t accept her. It’s also the only way she can escape being faced with her husband’s naked body.

 

She’s convinced he does it on purpose, to unnerve her, to show her he’s not afraid of her maybe. It’s a game, and she’s not interested in playing. She wishes she could swallow it down, ignore him rather than avoid him. The knowing smirk he throws her when she reappears hours later should be enough of an incentive. Instead his presence, his overfamiliarity, the reality of being married, it all throws her. Living on Earth has forged in her blood, made her into the commander of death. She has lived and breathed war for so long she doesn’t know what peace is supposed to look like. She’s fought on her own for so long she doesn’t know what an alliance is supposed to feel like. 

 

She watches as the village beneath her comes to life, watches as small flumes of smoke start to rise, as doors start to open and as children’s cries start to pierce the silence. She used to do the same at the Dropship sometimes, sit and watch the camp wake up as her stomach filled with dread about what life threatening challenge the day would bring. It’s different here, calmer. There is no fighting over the last scraps of meat or arguing whether berries are poisonous or not, no bloodcurdling screams from a wounded friend she doesn’t have the equipment to save. There is just life. 

 

Her eyes draw up to the sky, still marvelling at the opaque colours of day that hides the vastness beyond, that hides the constellations of stars that surrounded her entirely on the Ark. She used to look down on Earth every day, imagining what it would be like, wondering what the different colours meant. Now that she’s down here, her eyes are constantly drawn up instead, wondering how different it would have been if she’d stayed up there. 

 

Her eyes are ripped from the sky when she hears footsteps approach her. A warrior closes in on her, and she instinctively flexes her fist around the hilt of the knife religiously strapped to her thigh. It’s only when he steps closer she realises he’s nothing more than a boy. Underneath the paint and the rough armour he looks no older than 14. She still keeps a tight grasp on the knife, her body tense and ready to bolt.

 

“ _Gona_ ,” he greets her. One warrior to another. The way his eyes drop and his throat bobs it looks like it cost him to address her as an equal. 

 

He’s the first person who’s spoken directly to her since she arrived, bar her husband. 

 

“Can I help you with something?”

 

She almost curses herself for those words. That’s still her first instinct, to help, even though she doubts anyone here wants her help at all. 

 

“No, no,” he rushes to say, his tone almost offended, her suspicions confirmed. “It’s just…” 

 

He cuts himself off abruptly, clearly struggling with himself. He looks everywhere but her, and when he turns his face the morning sunlight hits him at a particular angle and she has to force the gasp that threatens to escape her down. There are clear, deep burn marks all the way from the top of his scull, down one half of his face and throat until it disappears under his armour. He’s tried to conceal it as best he can with war paint but the raised, grotesque pattern underneath is still visible, the hardened, shiny skin red and tight. She has to fight to keep her breathing even as her eyes flicker to his right hand. His thumb and forefinger are like gnarled, twisted branches, unnaturally stiff and bent. There are merely stumps where his remaining three fingers should be. 

 

She feels a wave of nausea rise in her throat, and her eyes threaten to release the tears they have been clinging to. She’s about to offer some words of apology, struggling to find some that begin to explain the choices she had been forced to make at his expense. Instead, the words that come out of his mouth next freezes her in place. 

 

“Your mother.”

 

Cold dread fills her as she repeats the words back to him. She hasn’t spoken to any of her people for almost a week now, muted by Bellamy’s arbitrary safety measure. She has no idea whether Lexa has honoured the alliance in her absence. 

 

“What about her?”

 

She doesn’t realise she’s gotten to her feet and taken a step towards the boy until he takes a step back. He’s scared of her, she realises, his eyes flickering nervously down to the white knuckled grip she still has on her knife. 

 

“She sends her regards,” he finally says, rushing to get the words out. “She’s doing well. She told me to tell you everything is ok, they have received the supplies you agreed on.”

 

She can feel her shoulders drop, the tension leaving her body in an instant. 

 

“You talked to her?” she says, a little desperately.

 

The boy squirms under her intense glare, but he relaxes a little as he nods, doesn’t back away from her further. 

 

“Yes, I went to your camp yesterday to bring Skaikru news of you,” he confirms, a little more confident. 

 

A way for Bellamy to control the information between their people, she realises. Underneath the annoyance something like relief floods her bones, warming her from the inside. 

 

“Thank you,” she says after a beat of silence, trying to meet his gaze. His eyes flicker up briefly, before falling back down to her hand on the hilt of her knife. She releases it quickly, letting her hand drop to her side. 

 

“Your friend Raven is very angry,” he says, finally looking up at her.

 

She has to chuckle at that, she can imagine how Raven must have been furiously trying to contact her for the last week or so. She can only imagine the hell she must have rained down on this boy warrior. He doesn’t smile back.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She falls into an uneasy rhythm with Bellamy. She escapes their cramped quarters in the mornings, filling her lungs with the fresh morning air as the village comes to life beneath her feet. She only dares to return hours later when she’s positive he is either already gone or at the very least clothed. They skirt around each other, barely speaking any words to each other at all. He brings food to their house without any explanation of where it comes from or how she can get a hold of it herself. He does point out where she get get water for a bath and how to heat it, which she is begrudgingly grateful for, waiting for him to leave before she strips and sinks into the metal tub. 

 

When he’s gone she runs her fingers over the worn spines of the books in the grand hall in front of their quarters, loosing herself in an old classic for hours until she hears his heavy steps on the stone stairs leading up to their front door. He doesn’t tell her where he goes or what he’s doing, but when he comes back he always looks tired and angry, sometimes a little lost. 

 

When he doesn’t leave the village he takes her with him. They walk down the slope to the centre of the village and she gets to see how it operates. He visits the blacksmith, inspects weapons and talks to the workers in trigedasleng. They go to the stables, the grain store, the smoke house and the villagers look at her with wide eyes and a mixture of fear and hate. No one ever says a word to her, besides Bellamy. She’s not sure if it’s a relief or a loss. 

 

At night she slips underneath the furs of their bed and pretends to be asleep by the time her husband slides in next to her, naked. Somehow she always wakes up tangled up in him and just for a second, before she’s fully awake, she lets herself melt into the warmth of another human being next to her. Once she realises that human being is as much of a monster as she is, she pulls away and escapes the house, ashamed of her own weakness that allows her to crave basic human contact from any source.

 

She comes back one morning to her husband waiting for her like he actually wants to say something to her. His eyes are tired but insistent, his lips drawn into a thin line. His jaw ticks when he clenches his teeth together. It’s disconcerting to say the least. 

 

“The village council is today,” he says plainly, holding her steady in his gaze. “I would like you to be there, to sit by my side.”

 

It’s not what she expected. She hasn’t been included into village life in any major capacity, any conversation she has overheard has been held in trigedasleng. She hasn’t reflected on whether it’s to purposefully keep her in the dark or merely to keep her at arm’s length. She suspects it’s both. 

 

“Why?”

 

She’s aware she sounds abrasive, but she can’t help the way he rubs her the wrong way without even really trying. 

 

“Because,” he starts, his tone changing from neutral to annoyed immediately. “You are my wife and we need to at least give the appearance of unity for this alliance to stand a chance.”

 

There is something in his voice beyond the annoyance, beyond the usual gruffness she’s come to expect, that tells her that’s not the full story.  There is a little bit too much insistence, an urgency to his voice that doesn’t quite connect with his simplistic explanation. 

 

“Why are appearances suddenly so important to you,” she asks, more curious than curt now. “It’s never mattered to you before.”

 

“Are you gonna join me or not?” 

 

He runs a hand through his curls in frustration, the other hand resting on his hips. This means more to him than he’s willing to tell her, but she can’t figure out why. 

 

“Fine,” she says finally, after letting him squirm for a bit. “Togetherness and all that.”

 

He nods his head just once, but she can see his shoulders sagging. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Clarke takes her seat next to Bellamy in the grand hall, on high backed, ornate chairs that seem to have been brought out for this specific purpose. On his other side sits his sister, stony faced. She doesn’t bat an eyelid when Clarke takes her place. Next to Octavia is a towering, dark man with black swirls of paint around his eyes. He flicks her a brief, menacing glance and she feels a shiver spread from the base of her spine to her neck. On her other side, more councillors flank her, stoic but intimidating in their presence. It’s odd sitting there by her husband’s side as if she is his partner in anything but theory. He’s tense next to her, the muscles in his forearms popping as he flexes his fingers. His face is a blank, hard mask like he’s going into battle.

 

There is a tension in the room she can’t put her finger on. It makes her straighten her back and watch the room with intense scrutiny. The council seems straight forward, more mundane than she had expected after the way Bellamy had insisted she joined and from how his jaw still ticks as he listens. Mostly they talk resources. Or the lack of them, as it turns out. After the council members have given Bellamy a detailed overview, he opens the floor to the villagers, and the tension grows thicker. She glances at him briefly, noting how his fingers have curled tightly around the armrests on his chair.

 

The first person to step forward is a young woman with sharp eyes and almost feline features. She is a hunter, the bones around her neck and furs over her shoulders indication enough, but the bow hanging off her back adds a final emphasis to her importance. She speaks in broken english but her meaning is clear enough. She is a hunter without hunting ground. She speaks of the dwindling small game in the home territories, and then - the crux of the matter.

 

“The big game is in Skaikru territory now.”

 

She can feel eyes burning holes in her skin, she can practically smell the hunger and desperation. The room is pindrop silent, the accusation hanging in the air.  

 

“What about the north?”

 

Bellamy’s voice is calm but she can hear the impatience, like none of this is news to him. 

 

“Azgeda,” the huntress says, and the room erupts into gasps and whispered outrage. Or fear, she’s not sure which. 

 

“Take more warriors with you next time,” Bellamy voices over the crowd, effectively silencing the room again.  

 

Octavia shifts in her chair next to Bellamy, like she wants to say something but he throws her a hard glance and she says nothing. 

 

The next person to step forward is the blacksmith, a big, burly man that always avoids eye contact with her whenever she's visited his workshop. His story is similar, although the details vary. The latest shipment of iron from Ice Nation has not been delivered, he's running out of materials to make more weapons. There is no accusation in his voice but she can still feel heads turning in her direction while he speaks. 

 

She's not surprised the villagers will blame her and her people for almost any ill befalling them, but she can't stop a scoff escaping her lips at the idea that they are somewhat responsible for trade agreements breaking down.

 

It's her turn to receive a glare from Bellamy this time, eyes dark and hard. She feels a small tug in her gut as his eyes bore into her, her breath hitching ever so slightly. The involuntary reaction makes her glare back just as hard, makes her jut out her jaw in defiance until he finally looks away.

 

"When was the last time anyone from Azgeda visited the village?" 

 

His voice is tight, unmistakenly angry now, and she has a feeling it's not the blacksmith that has provoked him. 

 

"A trade party was here almost four weeks ago," the large man next to Octavia says, almost gently. "They left the night before your wedding."

 

The room is eerily silent as his last words drop like stones to the ground. She's almost certain every pair of eyes in the room are on her right now, accusing her. The air is thick with implication, as if the very impossibility of this marriage is the reason they don't have enough resources. As if it was forced on them as much as it was on her. It makes her anger flare hot in her gut, makes her hackles rise. Of course she's supposed to bear the responsibility for this too, as if she hasn't already got the weight of the world on her shoulders. 

 

"Any contact since, Lincoln?" Bellamy asks after a beat, turned away from her so she can't read his expression.

 

"None," the towering, dark-skinned man replies, stoic. His answer comes quick and sure, and she catches herself thinking it sounds almost rehearsed.

 

The crowd mutter quietly to each other, and when Bellamy finally turns back to her his face is unreadable. She raises an eyebrow to him, challenging him to respond to the mounting, yet unspoken accusations being laid at her feet. He says nothing, and she wonders if the united front he insisted on was merely a ploy to show her just how much he's sacrificing for this alliance. She wishes she had another bangle to throw at his head. 

 

The tense atmosphere in the room is uncomfortable now, but her husband presses ahead motioning for the next speaker to step forwards. It is a short but solid man, his long hair tangled in matted dreads, a badly healed scar running down the bridge of his nose along his cheekbone and down towards his ear. It makes him look intimidating enough, but the cold, frosty stare he levels at her freezes her to her chair, almost like an icy hand gripping the back of her skull and holding her in place. 

 

He speaks loudly, with the angry, raspy vowels of trigedasleng, looking at her the whole time. She can tell he's another warrior, the sharp blades crossed behind his back almost identical to Octavia's. There is a collection of bones and teeth threaded onto a string around his neck, and she is confident they didn't all come from animals. 

 

He continues to speak while the crowd bristle and caw at his words, but he speaks too fast for her to understand. It's still painfully obvious he is talking about her with undiluted hatred in his voice.

 

"English, please!" 

 

Bellamy interrupts harshly, his voice booming across the hall, his hand raised in a halting motion. The man turns towards his leader, nostrils flaring, defiance painted all over his face. Bellamy stares down the warrior, calm but visibly annoyed. After a couple of beats the warrior relents, bowing his head slightly, composes himself. 

 

"Azgeda are testing our borders, _gona_ ," he starts, his English crystal clear. "Every day our warriors run into one of their patrols along the mountain passes in the north. They disappear as soon they know they've been seen. They are moving further east now, along the river bed, moving deeper and deeper into our territory. They are testing us."

 

He pauses for effect, but Bellamy seems unaffected. He knows what the warrior is about to say, expects it, is ready for it. 

 

"Azgeda was against this alliance from the start," the warrior continues, his cheeks flushed with rage. "War is inevitable. Skaikru are still bringing death to our door."

 

"Skaikru have no interest in this war," she snaps before Bellamy has a chance to respond. "We have had no dealings with Ice Nation."

 

She feels his icy blue eyes whip around and slice into her, his rage white hot. 

 

"Skaikru landed in Azgeda territory, just as you landed in our territory," he seethes, fists clenched and moving a step closer. "The only difference is that Azgeda wiped you all out while they had the chance."

 

She's having a hard time connecting his words and making sense of them. They hadn't landed in Ice Nation territory, the Ark had lost contact with Farm Station before they made it to the ground. They had always assumed it had broken off and landed in the ocean.

 

"Azgeda," Bellamy cuts in, acerbic, "has been looking for an excuse for years." 

 

He gets on his feet, towering over the angry warrior, who actually shrinks back for a second. Instinctively her hand flies to the shaft of her knife, and out of the corner of her eye she can see Octavia's hand doing the same. 

 

"This is not new," he continues, addressing the whole room. "Queen Nia has been undermining _Heda's_ authority since the ascension, our alliance with Skaikru was a convenient excuse. Azgeda is the problem here, not Skaikru."

 

"Are you really going to forget what they did to us because you've got one of them in your bed? Forget what they did to our families? To _your_ family?" 

 

"Careful, Rivo." Bellamy's voice is low and menacing, stepping closer to the warrior. "Peace isn't about forgetting. It's about remembering every single thing that happened, every life lost and making sure it never happens again."

 

Rivo nods his head curtly, stepping back with his head lifted high but resignation written all over him in the way his shoulders sag and the way his eyes won't meet Bellamy's. 

 

"If Azgeda attack we'll be ready for them," Bellamy commands, the crowd whispering their consent, heads nodding along to his words. "But it is up to the Commander to decide if we make the first strike. I will go to Polis tomorrow to hold a council of war with her."

 

With a flick of his wrist the council is disbanded, people filing out of the room still discussing intently amongst themselves. It's only when the room is almost empty she notices she's still clutching her knife tightly in her hand.

 

"You knew about this?" 

 

She wishes her voice wasn't so shaky. 

 

Bellamy turns from the conversation he was having with Octavia and Lincoln to face her, his  mouth drawn into a tight line. He sighs deeply, scratching the back of his head absentmindedly, as if he's considering his next words carefully. 

 

"We only heard rumours," Lincoln says, careful. "We weren't sure."

 

"You didn't think to tell me that several hundred of my people might still be alive?" 

 

She addresses only her husband, not even glancing at Octavia or Lincoln, who wisely keeps his mouth shut. She feels cold from the inside out, her head swimming trying to take in all this new information.

 

"We don't think there were any survivors," Bellamy finally says, his carefully chosen words so brilliantly devastating she almost wants to laugh. "None of your people have tried to cross our borders in the north."

 

"Ice Nation killed them all?"

 

Her voice is too soft, too small, too pleading. She barely notices Octavia and Lincoln quietly leaving the room. 

 

"I'm sorry."

 

It's jarring, those words from him. It's not what she wants, she doesn't need comfort from him. She needs to keep things distant and rational and easy to compartmentalize. 

 

"You should have told me," she says, firm. Sentimentality has no place in their relationship. 

"To at least give an appearance of unity."

 

It feels good to add some sting to her voice again, to feel like her feet are back on solid ground. His jaw is set and his eyes are hard when she throws his words back in his face, but he blinks too much as he takes them in. If she didn't know better she'd say her words hit home.

 

"I don't know what you want from me," he says, gruff, almost a little breathless. 

 

It surprises her to find she has multiple answers to his question. Some of them are slippery and hard to define, contradictory and difficult to fully form. Others are more petulant and demanding. She pushes all of them to the side for the one that pulses in her chest like a heart beat.

 

"The truth, for once."

 

She watches his eyes flicker like he's pushing down some answers of his own. 

 

"I want to know why this alliance is so important to you."

 

He kicks at an imaginary stone on the floor, hands planted firmly on his hips, fighting some internal battle with himself over which version of the truth he should give her.

 

"We can't fight two wars at once."

 

It's simple. Obvious, really, now that she's got more context. Azgeda must have posed a bigger threat to them than the sorry scraps of her people who were still fighting tooth and nail just to stay alive. Ice Nation wants a war for the sake of war. And then another piece of the puzzle clicks into place.

 

"You're hoping our technology can help you win this war?"

 

It's not so much a question as a statement, and the shrug of his shoulders isn't so much a confirmation as it is a defeat. 

 

"My people want peace, Bellamy. We just want to live." She curls her fingers into her palms, muscle memory still fresh with the hard, cold soil underneath her fingernails from burying Finn and his small hunting party mere weeks ago. It makes her wonder if anyone bothered to bury the unlucky souls that had landed with Farm Station in Ice Nation territory. 

 

"Peace isn't always possible."

 

He is too much heat and reaction, like a pot of water waiting to boil over and cause destruction in his wake. 

 

"War isn't always inevitable."

 

She is cool thought, too scarred by the death she has held between her own hands to not make every agonizing decision count. 

 

"I can see why Lexa wanted you to be a part of this alliance," he says and she can see why Lexa wanted him to be the other half. 

 

Silence stretches between them and it doesn't feel like the usual quiet that comes from having nothing to say to each other. Instead it feels like she has too much to say, and it shouldn't be this easy between them. It's too much of a betrayal. 

 

Bellamy opens his mouth and closes it again like he was going to break the silence but thought better of it, shaking his head sharply once as if he can physically expel the thought from his brain.

 

"Warn me before you put me in the firing line like that again," she snarls, because she cannot bear this strange wordless understanding passing between them any longer. 

 

His face snaps back into familiar, hard lines, arrogant sneer back on his lips. _Good._  

 

She rams her shoulder into him as she passes him on her way to their quarters, and she gets no small amount of satisfaction at the way he stumbles to keep his balance. She feels like she can finally breathe again when she's alone. 

 

* * *

 

 

She dreams of metal and bodies hurtling through the atmosphere down to the ground, panicked screams and fevered prayers ringing in her ears. She dreams of axes splitting flesh, of arrows breaking skin, of bodies falling, of children screaming for their parents. She feels cold, dead hands claw at her, trying to drag her down, reaching for her throat. She wakes with a jolt, hot and sticky. Hands are still on her, pulling at her and panic keeps rising in her throat. She blindly fumbles under her pillow for her knife, pulling it out lightning quick, her reflexes guiding her hand.  

 

When she blinks her eyes open the blade is pressed against Bellamy’s throat, the sharp metal gleaming in the remains of the firelight. His eyes are wide but he stays stock still, frozen in his position above her. His hand is on her shoulder, he’s kneeling between her legs. 

 

“Nightmare,” he murmurs, careful. His lips are a thin line, the knife bobbing slightly as he swallows. 

 

Her body is rigid and tense, cold sweat pricking her skin like needles from her thighs to her back to the top of her head. He says nothing more and she doesn’t relent, her arm like stone, her hand like claws gripping the knife steadily. She’s wide awake now and adrenaline is pumping the blood around her body so hard she can feel every beat of her heart thump almost painfully in her chest. She’s got her eyes glued on him, watching him for any hint of movement, any excuse for her to dig that blade into flesh. He watches her just as intently, waits for an unguarded moment, watches for an opportunity to turn the tables. 

 

Suddenly he leans forward, pushing into the blade. Metal breaks skin, drops of blood trickling down the blade, but he doesn’t flinch. He just keeps his eyes fixed on her, waiting for her to back down as the knife digs further into his throat. She feels a flash of heat spread over her skin, like her whole body is on fire. Her arm trembles and his throat bobs, but neither of them can back down. He shifts above her, and she gasps loudly as his knee grazes her centre unexpectedly. The throb between her legs is as involuntary as the sound, and she sees something flash over his eyes that only makes her burn hotter. His eyes are dark as he leans even closer, seemingly mindless to the knife digging into his skin. He shifts again, this time purposefully, grinding his knee down between her legs. Her hips rock into him, chasing friction on instinct but she’s too hot to let conscious thought shame her for it. His eyes droop and his jaw goes soft as he watches her grind on his leg and she feels him harden against her thigh, the velvety softness of him making the throb between her legs ever more insistent.

 

She drops the knife with a thunk to the floor, need driving her hands as she pulls at his curls roughly, guiding him down to her mouth. She kisses him hard and mean, her tongue licking into him like she’s trying to suck the taste of him clean off. Her teeth dig into the soft skin of his lips and she swallows his low moans down hungrily. Her hands never let go of their punishing grip on his hair. 

 

He responds eagerly, hands burning hot trails over her skin, making her whine and gasp into his mouth. He rucks up her shirt with rough hands, pulls down the cups of her bra so he can tweak her nipples, fast and precise. It makes her lose grip of his hair, arching her back off the mattress to get closer. She digs her nails into his lower back, pulls him down into her so she can feel him against her core, urgent and insistent. 

 

He pulls back, his eyes finding hers. His pupils are blown, almost black in the dim light of the fire, his hair an unholy mess and his lips red and raw. It makes the heat between her legs almost uncomfortable, makes her rock against him with focused determination.

 

"Do you want this?” he asks, voice a little shot, but she’s not sure if it’s because of the wet glide of her soaked panties over his cock or because he just had a knife pushed into his larynx. She rocks her hips again just to check. 

 

"Because if you keep doing that I'm not gonna be able to stop."

 

A thrill runs through her like a rush of cool air against overheated skin, the promise of those words ringing in her ears. Because she doesn’t just want this, she _needs_ this. She needs to feel something besides pain and death and comfort, she needs hands on her that don’t mean to do her harm. At least not the violent kind of harm. She grinds harder into him, finding it difficult to get the words out, finding it impossible to admit she does need him for something. 

 

"I'm gonna need you to say it,” he growls, his hips jerking as she pushes into him. 

 

She doesn’t respond, so he pulls away, breaking that precious contact and she almost cries out at the deprivation. 

 

"Yes, I want this,” she breathes, relenting, not caring that her voice sounds high pitched and desperate. 

 

He slides a thumb up her slit, slowly padding over her clit and she curses under her breath as it makes her twitch under his fingers. 

 

"Want what?” 

 

He’s got that arrogant smirk on his face again, and she’s torn between slapping it off him for making her beg and just sitting on it so he can put that mouth to better use. He flicks his thumb expertly over her clit and all rational thought leaves her brain, and she just needs all of him, _right now_.

 

"I want your cock inside me, goddamn it Bellamy,” she snaps, louder than she had planned, but instead of a smirk he looks absolutely wrecked so she counts it as a win. 

 

He pushes her panties to the side roughly, sliding his cock up and down her slit a few times before plunging into her. She gasps loudly at the way he fills her so suddenly, the sharp pain hitting the back of her head and making stars dance before her eyes. He doesn’t let her adjust, he just snaps his hips viciously, filling her so completely, so perfectly. There is nothing gentle about it, the way he pushes into her over and over, just pure animalistic want. And it’s exactly what she needs so she pushes back, grinds down on him with matched force, relishing the way the pain increases her pleasure. She chases each thrust, gasps each time he bottoms out inside her, the ache inside her growing with each snap of his hips. She lets her nails dig deep ravines down his back, greedy for his pain just as he is for hers. 

 

He pulls out suddenly, flips her over on all fours and pulls her ruined panties down her legs. She’s barely caught her breath before he’s crowded against her back, his teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her shoulder. 

 

“Clarke,” he whispers against her skin, his voice cracked and longing and it makes her legs shake. He’s never called her by name before. 

 

She’s about to pull away, to escape the intimacy when he wraps a hand around her hair and yanks her head back. Pain shoots up her spine and spreads like fire over her scalp and she almost wants to scream at how much more it makes her want him. He pulls her hips back with his other hand and pushes his cock back into her, slow and torturous and she can already tell this angle is going to be a lot to handle.  

 

He starts slowly, setting her on fire with the careful slide of his cock. She can feel her cunt clinging to him, can feel how her own body uses his to reap pleasure, feels how each throb of her makes his cock strain against its own skin. 

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” she sobs, feeling her legs starting to tremble and she hates how quickly he can get her this close to the edge. 

 

“Not yet,” he growls into her back, before pushing her head into the mattress, opening her even further to him.

 

He picks up the pace again, slamming into her roughly and it’s exactly what she needs. His cock hits her deep, a dull ache spreading with each thrust and even though she can’t feel her toes she manages to stop the wave that was threatening to crush her. 

 

She needs to hold off, needs to control this, needs to show him she can bring him to his knees too. She clenches down on him the next time he thrusts into her, and she can hear his breath hitch and his rhythm falter. The warm glow in her stomach explodes so she does it again and again until he slows right down, gasping and cursing under his breath behind her. 

 

It’s her turn to set the pace now, so she slides away from underneath him, gets him on his back and straddles his hips. He’s breathless and his hands are shaky on her hips, so she makes a big show of sliding out of her henley, unhooking her bra slowly and deliberately. His breathing slows down with her moves, his dark gaze sending small thrills up her neck. When she finally drops her bra to the floor he is wide eyed and awestruck underneath her, and it feels like they are on even footing again. He watches her intently as she runs her hands up her body, her fingers plucking gently at her nipples, twisting and pulling in time with the rock of her hips against his cock. 

 

She sinks down on him with a gasp, pressing her hand against her pelvis so she can feel him slide all the way in from the outside. His eyes flutter shut as she circles her hips, lifts up and slams down again. She can tell he’s trying to control his orgasm, just like she was riding the edge of hers and she increases her pace a little just to see how close he is. His fingers grips her hips so tightly she knows they’ll bruise, but she doesn’t care, she relishes the control, wants to see him lose his. 

 

His eyes flash up at her darkly like he knows what game she’s playing, jerking his hips up to meet her and suddenly she doesn’t know if she can control herself long enough. Her world narrows down to a pinpoint, his flesh inside hers, the throb of her muscles, the building ache in her gut. He runs rough hands up to cup her breasts and she arches her back and grinds down on him until his breath stutters. She runs her nails over the hard planes of his torso, flicking a nail over his nipple and he retaliates by flicking a nail over hers. She digs her nails into his chest and clenches her walls tight around him, and he drops his hand to her clit, running tight circles over it. 

 

_We’re destroying each other_ , she thinks, but she doesn’t know how to stop, doesn’t want to

 

She fills her lungs with the scent of him, falls down to let her mouth lap at him, inhaling him like she’s been starving all this time. 

She wants to devour, to swallow him down, and she does. She bites down on his tongue as he pinches at her clit, her cunt obliterates him. She fills her fists with him as they both shudder and cry out, both in defeat and victory, leaves her fingerprints all over him as she finally lets herself be washed away with that wave. 

 

They collapse into each other, licking small whimpers out of each others mouths, stealing breaths from one another. He is warm and soft under her, and she’s heavy and spent, her mind blissfully blank. Oxytocin floods her bloodstream, making her reluctant to peel herself away from his touch, but he must be riding his own high because his hand stays tangled in her hair, the other one pulling her close. 

 

So they fall asleep tangled together like that, neither really caring about the destruction they have caused each other, no care for the wreckage they will wake up in. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that stars shine the brightest when they are about to collapse. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a couple of christmas related fic prompts to fill in the next month, so look out for those! I *think* you'll be very happy about some of them. Will get back to updating this asap once they are done, but I'm slow so deal with it :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Now is not the time,” he insists, his eyes cold and resolute.
> 
> “Because you fucked me?” she challenges, crossing her arms over her naked chest to emphasise her point. “Worried it’s going to complicate things?”
> 
> He narrows his eyes, raises his chin slightly and she can see the muscles in his throat tense. 
> 
> “Don’t worry, Bellamy, this doesn’t change a thing.” Her voice is hard, but there is an edge to it she can’t quite hide. “My people is still my first priority, just like your people is yours. It didn’t mean anything.”
> 
> His eyelashes flutter briefly, then his hard glare returns.
> 
> “You’ll just slow me down, that’s all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa ok I can't believe it's been SIX MONTHS since I updated this, holy shit, I'm so sorry! I've been picking away at this chapter the whole time but life has been pretty shitty for a while now so writing hasn't been top priority. Anyways, maybe it's because I've been working on it forever or maybe it's just because I got lost in plot again, but this chapter ended up being so long that I've chopped it in two. So this time I can confidently say that the next chapter will be up NEXT WEEK and I'm not even lying. Hope you guys like it, I know it's been forever...

Her eyelids are heavy and slow as she struggles to wake up. Normally she wakes with a jolt, her alertness on high as soon as consciousness sets in. Today, her body protests, keeps dragging her back down under like there’s an endless ocean trying to swallow her up. She tries to move an arm, tries to make her limbs work to force her brain to follow. A dull ache resonates throughout her shoulders as she moves, and she moans lowly at the way her muscles twinge. She cracks an eye open, blinking slowly at the blinding light that fills it. _Shit_ , it must be late. 

She forces her other eye open, her eyes bleary with sleep and her head thick and hazy with something that’s just outside her awareness. She cricks her neck awkwardly, driving the heaviness out of her body piece by piece. The bedroom is filled with the unmistakable bright light of day. Not morning. There is a shuffle and her head turns towards the sound, her husband coming back into the room, half dressed. And then it clicks. 

The memories flood back, not just the flashes of skin against skin, but the feel of his hot, wet mouth over her nipples, his heavy, salty scent, the low rumble of his voice breathing her name. It’s like a full body memory, goosebumps erupting over her skin and a deep, hot flush rising in her cheeks. She shifts uncomfortably against the furs, feeling the stretch and burn of the muscles in her legs and ass. 

“You’re awake,” he mumbles, distractedly, and she’s not really sure he’s addressing her at all. Ice forms in her gut. 

She makes a noncommittal sound, trying to arrange the furs to cover herself surreptitiously. He’s not even looking, lost in a mission to get dressed. When he turns away from her there are angry, red welts all over his back. She follows the trails her nails made over his skin with a mixture of wonder and deep shame. In the cold light of day the kind of passion that drove her to mark him like that seems impossible. She hates him. There is blood on his hands that belong to her people, to people she was responsible for, people she cared for and even loved. How can last night be anything but a betrayal to her dead friends?

“Where are you going?”

There is no mistaking the armour that he fastens over his jacket, the jangle of weapons clearly indicating he intends to leave the village. 

“Polis,” he replies, curt. To see Lexa, she remembers. To discuss war against Azgeda. 

“Not without me, you’re not,” she says, unable to keep the snap out of her voice. 

She gets out of bed, slightly humiliated by the wobble that is clearly visible in her legs. She refuses to cover herself in front of him, forcing her arms to stay by her sides as she searches for underwear, at the very least. 

“Not this time,” he says, firm, crossing his arms over his chest. 

When her eyes snap to his, they’re focused somewhere below her chin, but he quickly meets her gaze. Something hard passes over his face, determination sets in his jaw. 

“Why not?” She can feel that familiar rage rise in her chest. It seems like last night has changed absolutely nothing between them after all. “It’s our war too.”

“Now is not the time,” he insists, his eyes cold and resolute.

“Because you fucked me?” she challenges, crossing her arms over her naked chest to emphasise her point. “Worried it’s going to complicate things?”

He narrows his eyes, raises his chin slightly and she can see the muscles in his throat tense. 

“Don’t worry, Bellamy, this doesn’t change a thing.” Her voice is hard, but there is an edge to it she can’t quite hide. “My people is still my first priority, just like your people is yours. It didn’t mean anything.”

His eyelashes flutter briefly, then his hard glare returns.

“You’ll just slow me down, that’s all.”

And with that he turns on his heel and walks out of the room. She wishes she had something bigger than her balled up panties to throw at his head. 

She dresses herself in a rage, thinking about all the reasons why she should be in Polis when Lexa decides whether or not to take on Ice Nation, calling Bellamy every name under the sun. She has every intention of going out there and throwing herself on the nearest horse and following him, ignoring the sharp pain in her leg muscles.

Just as she picks up her knife from the floor next to the bed, Bellamy walks back in, practically stomping his feet.

“Here,” he says, voice tight. He slams her radio down on the table. “Talk to your people. We’ll discuss when I return.”

He walks out without throwing her another glance. 

* * *

“Thank god!”

Raven’s voice is thick, there’s real worry underneath her stern tone. 

“Where have you been? Are you ok? I told you to check in with me every day.”

Her mix of concern and admonishment is exactly what she expected, and it makes her more than a little homesick. It makes her question every decision that has brought her here. 

“I’m fine,” she sighs, because physically that is true at least. “I just had some… hardware problems.”

“I rewired that radio myself, it should work just fine. Unless you broke the antenna. Did you break the antenna, Griffin?”

“Raven, I didn’t break the antenna, ok?” she says, exasperated. “I didn’t do anything to the radio, everything works as it should."

The line goes silent for a moment, and she can practically hear Raven figuring out the equation.

“That little grounder shit head took it, didn’t he?” 

Her powers of deduction had always been sharper than any grounder spear, and had already played a large role in their survival. Right now though, she wishes they weren’t so pinpoint accurate. She bristles against the anger in Raven’s voice, though she’s not sure why.

“I’ve got it back now,” is all she says. It’s too complicated to try to unpack why she feels like she is defending Bellamy’s irrational and frankly offensive decision to take the radio from her. 

“Fuck, I knew that boy was lying his ass off when he said your radio wasn’t working,” Raven continues, still riding high on outrage.

“Raven, you can be angry later, but right now I really need to speak to my mother.”

She had watched Bellamy’s back as he had left the village in a rush. His sister had been at his side, as had Rivo, and as relieved as she should’ve been to not be left behind in camp with them her stomach at twisted in hard knots because once again Earth had felt volatile and dangerous, ready to erupt into violence. Whenever she had felt like that before, death had never been far behind. 

Abby is breathless and overwrought when she finally comes on the line, the only way she can be when it comes to her. 

“Clarke? Are you ok, baby?”

“Mom, I’m fine, but I have some news.”

She wastes no time telling her about the war council, about the likely fate of Farm Station, about the threat that Ice Nation now poses to all of them. 

“We need to be at that war council, mom. If there is any chance Ice Nation has captured any of our people we have to get them back.”

There is a short silence where they both let the implications of yet another war sink in. They had exhausted every possibility, made so many sacrifices to avoid this, but somehow they always end up here. 

“Don’t worry, Kane is still in Polis. I’ll radio him right now.”

It eases the hard knot in her stomach a little, knowing someone is there, even though she can’t quite let go of the feeling that it should be her. She never asked for the role, never wanted to lead, but she had accepted it, taken on the responsibility and carried with her in her heart and on her body. Being forced to let go feels like more of a punishment than she had expected. 

“Tell him not to give too much away. Even if he won’t admit it, Bellamy needs us. They need our guns.”

“Marcus will do everything in his power to protect our people, Clarke.”

“Ok.” She swallows around the thick word in her throat.

Abby’s unshakeable faith in Kane is comforting and she is thankful her mother has found such an easy partnership with someone. It puts her own union under a sharp light. 

“How is he?” Abby asks, careful. 

“He’s… fine.”

She’s trying hard to block out the memories of last night, of his hands dragging slowly over her skin, the weight on him on top of her, the tension in his muscles as he moved beneath her. Her mind flits over heavy, burning eyes, a sharp blade against dark skin, his arrogant fucking smirk.

“He’s hard to figure out,” she admits. 

Abby sighs deeply, and even though their relationship has been complicated to say the least, the distance between them is tangible and hard to take right now. 

“I wish it didn’t have to be like this for you,” she finally says, quietly. 

“I know.”

When she finally signs off, her throat hurts from keeping down the despair that has bubbled in her chest and threatened to turn into fully fledged sobs. 

* * *

The day stretches into impossibly long hours, the minutes seem to be endless in their emptiness. She can’t do any of the things she normally does when Bellamy is away. Reading is impossible to concentrate on, her knife is more than sharp enough already. Plus she feels self conscious having it strapped to her leg now, the memories too vivid. She’s not accustomed to feeling so completely useless. 

By the time the sun is high on the sky, she decides idle hands won’t make news from Polis come any quicker. She ambles down the hill to the village, her feet steady but her nerve faltering ever so slightly when she feels eyes land heavy accusations on her. She pushes her chin out and forges ahead, looking more determined than she feels by the time she arrives at her destination. 

She pushes the heavy door cover to the side and slips inside quickly, partly to escape the stares, partly so she doesn’t change her mind. The sick bay is dark and the air heavy with a familiar sweetness, a smell she was practically raised on. It’s almost comforting to her, despite the way heads turn towards her as she enters.

“ _Wanheda_ ,” the healer greets, surprised but deferent. 

He’s a big man, bigger than some of the fiercest warriors in the village, but she’s seen how gentle his hands are, how quietly he moves between the cots. His brow is furrowed but his eyes soft and kind. Still, he can’t hide the faint trace of almost desperate helplessness she recognises all too well. 

She scans the room briefly. Barely half the cots are occupied, most of them by elderly villagers. Nothing a seasoned healer wouldn’t be able to handle. 

“How are your supplies?”

The healer’s eyes flicker with uncertainty, not sure whether she’s friend or foe, unsure whether to address her as wife of their leader or enemy of their people. 

“I’m here to help,” she says firmly, and for the first time in weeks it feels like the simple, honest truth. No games, no politics. All she wants is to be useful. 

He nods briefly and beckons for her to follow him, showing the way to the store room. It’s not much, and by the look on his face it’s nowhere near what he needs. Most of the potions and herbs are unfamiliar to her, and her mind immediately goes to the rows of antibiotics, anasthetics and pain medications that thankfully made it down with the Ark. The smell of one of the jars reminds her of the poultice they found on Jasper, and the memory makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. 

“Normally we’d have more,” the healer says when she picks up the only familiar thing in the room, a piece of red seaweed. “But the situation with Azgeda…it’s not safe.”

He meets her eye when he says it, but there is no reproach in his voice. 

“If there is a war…” she starts, and he catches her meaning with a simple nod. They don’t have the supplies to help the wounded. 

“I know.” His tone is sombre, betraying a weariness that she doubts he’d ever show his patients. “Maybe there won’t be one.”

She can tell he doesn’t believe that. 

“What about the ones out there?” She motions to the sick bay.

“Mostly just old,” he sighs, some of the weariness lifting. "Mostly treatable.”

“I meant it when I said I’m here to help,” she says, rolling up her sleeves. “Put me to work."

It feels good helping people in a tangible way. She cools clammy brows, helps water down dry throats, checks vitals and feels a little more like herself with every patient she helps.The healer shows her how his potions work but mostly lets her get on with it, nodding almost imperceptibly to her as she moves from patient to patient. Some patients tense under her hands, eyes filled with fear or hate, but most relax as she soothes their ailments. Some patients are too sleepy or sick to even notice who’s by their bedside. 

She moves on to a cot with a small child, his complexion pallid and his brow slick with sweat. His small lungs rise and fall with laboured breath, a slow, wheezing rasp grating against her consciousness, making her wince. He can’t be much older than three. His mother is by his side, clasping his limp hand tightly, but she jerks back violently as Clarke approaches. Her eyes are dark and accusing, her lips moving with a curse in a language she still doesn’t understand. She throws the healer a questioning look, but he only sends her an encouraging nod and turns back to his own patient. 

She takes a deep breath and moves to the boy’s side, checking his pulse and his temperature. She can feel his mother watching her every move, tense and ready to protect, still clutching his hand fiercely. The boy is burning up. His pulse is sluggish and he can barely keep his eyelids open long enough to focus on her. A sudden, violent coughing fit wracks his small body, and both she and his mother reach for him to soothe him. When he finally falls back against the mattress, she can see how exhausted he is and on his hand there is a faint smear of red. 

She carefully wipes the boy’s brow and mouth, and once he seems settled she makes a beeline for the healer. The mother’s eyes never leave her. 

“How long has he been like this?”

The healer’s eyes are weary, and his voice low when he answers. 

“He’s been getting worse for months now.”

She nods solemnly, mostly to herself. She’s never seen a live patient with this, but it’s recognisable enough from Abby’s medical books which she used to read with a flashlight under her duvet up on the Ark. 

“The herbs aren’t working, not the steam, not the tea. We tried bleeding him. It only made him worse.”

She winces, knowing full well none of the healer’s potions can do anything for this boy.

“I know what this is,” she says, keeping her voice low and steady. “He needs to be in Arkadia, my mother can help him.”

“His mother will never allow it,” the healer says, with a finality that sends a chill down her spine. 

He says it with such conviction that she can’t even question it. She can still feel the mother’s eyes on her, her hostility rolling off her in waves. But she also knows the outcome of untreated tuberculosis, and she knows she can’t accept his answer. 

“He’ll die within weeks if she doesn’t,” she says, trying to convey the urgency of the matter. 

The healer looks resigned, like he’s known where this has been heading for months already. Like he’s already turned every stone.

“He needs antibiotics.” Again her mind flies to the rows and rows of medicine at their disposal at Arkadia, such simple cures for suffering. 

“Medicine,” she clarifies, when the healer looks at her with confusion. “We have technology and medicine that can save his life so easily.”

“She won’t accept Skaikru’s help,” he says, calm, but she can see a trace of exasperation in his features, just a small wrinkle on his forehead that wasn’t there before. “But we can try.”

He speaks to the mother in hushed tones, and it’s the most soothing version of trigedasleng she’s heard. The mother listens intently, but shakes her head furiously, throwing her some searing glares every now and again. Suddenly the mother rounds on her, spitting angry words out that she cannot understand. The meaning is clear though. She will not allow her son to be sent to Arkadia for treatment. 

Frustrated, she turns on her heel, racking her brain for solutions. Maybe she can go to Arkadia and fetch the antibiotics herself, maybe she can get some sent to Polis for Bellamy to bring back. Before she has formulated a plan, the mother starts to wail. Long, heart shattering howls pierce the thick silence of the sick bay. It’s the kind of inconsolable desperation she’s seen too much of, the kind she had been hoping to leave behind when she agreed on the alliance. It’s the kind that forces a reaction. 

She rushes out of the tent, her focus set on the building at the top of the hill, the one she can’t quite bring herself to call home yet. She rushes up the hill, the breath slightly knocked out of her but she barely notices, just keeps running towards the house. She quickly finds her pack and rummages around until she finds her med kit. She counts the small glass bottles of antibiotics left, knowing it’s not enough but also knowing it’s something, a small hope. She rushes back down the hill again, oblivious to the eyes that follow her down. 

There is a particular heartbreak in watching a mother grieve for her son, the way her body is slumped, the way her hands cling to him like her love can keep him here. She sees the desperation, the willingness to sacrifice anything for her child, and yet even this mother cannot bring herself to trust her. To trust her people. It makes her wonder if this alliance ever stands a chance. She brushes the thought aside, focused on the task at hand. 

“These will help,” she says, speaking to the mother directly, showing her the glass bottles. “ _Fis em op_.”

Her trigedasleng is shaky at best, and judging by the wary look on the mother’s face, she’s not sure she’s got the right words. The healer comes to her side, studies the bottles of clear liquid with scepticism on his face. 

“This is the medicine he needs.” She tries to persuade him first, so he can persuade the mother. “This is antibiotics, but I haven’t got enough. Can you please tell her that if this helps, if he gets better, then she has to let him go to Arcadia to finish the treatment.”

She stares at the healer with what she hopes is determined intensity, praying quietly to herself that he will trust her. She knows she has no right to ask it of him, of any of them. She is still a killer in their eyes, not a healer. She understands their distrust because she feels the same about them. 

“I’m here to help,” she says, finally. And she’s surprised at how true that sounds, even to herself. All she ever wanted to do was to help, no matter the cost to herself. 

The healer nods, speaks to the mother in clear, convincing sounds. The mother still shakes her head. The little boy wheezes, then coughs loudly again and again, a long, excruciating spell. When he finally sinks back into the mattress, oblivious to the battle of wills surrounding him, his mother finally relents. A short, resigned nod is all she gets, but it’s all she needs. She readies the syringe, and pushes half a vial of the clear liquid into his tiny veins and it feels like a momentous achievement to be allowed to help him. The boy complains softly at the jab, but falls back asleep instantly. Her shoulders drop with relief, as if a bomb has failed to diffuse. 

“He should start to breathe a little easier in a few hours,” she says, mostly to the healer. She knows she has a long way to go with the mother still. “The temperature should drop by tomorrow.”

The healer watches her with questioning eyes, and she thinks there is a trace of relief in his tone when he speaks again. 

“You’re a healer.”

“My mother is,” she smiles, wry. “I just learned what I could from her.”

“Thank you, _Wanheda_.”

She cringes under the name, a reminder of how many more lives she has claimed rather than saved. 

“Clarke,” she insists. 

“Clarke,” he agrees, though the name is unfamiliar on his tongue. “ _Ai laik Nyko_.”

* * *

She stays in the sick bay all evening, and it’s no small relief to her when the little boy’s breathing starts to improve. His mother isn’t quite so weary when she tends to him, but still looks at her with enough animosity that she thinks it’s still going to be an uphill battle to get her to agree to take him to Arkadia. It’s feels good to be useful again, but when Nyko tells her to call it a night she’s secretly relieved. Her muscles still ache, and the memory of last night still comes back to her in waves whenever she moves a certain way. 

She’s heading towards the exit when the tent flap snaps back and a group of warriors rush in, red staining their hands. She counts four seriously wounded men, some barely able to stand, two seemingly unconscious. 

“Help him,” a gravelly voice demands, and she’s been so focused on the wounded men it’s only now she realises the voice belongs to her husband. 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes hours. Hours of near misses, strangled cries and grisly wounds that will leave some disfigured for life, but they all live. The overwhelming sense of relief she feels at that startles her. These men would have loved nothing more than to see life bleed out of her just weeks ago, some might even still enjoy that. These men that have her friends’ blood on their hands have been responsible for all the pain and fear she has felt since she landed on Earth. Yet now her hands are stained red with their blood and all she feels is relief that she could help save them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, part two of my hiatus chapter or chapter 5 as it's now called.   
> Thank you guys so much for your support & lovely comments, I feel 1000% more motivated to keep updating as quickly as I can because of your love!

Her head snaps round to inspect her husband. He’s bloodied, a few obvious open wounds on his forehead and cheeks and there is a broken off arrow still stuck in his leg, right above his kneecap. His hands and armour are covered in dark red blood, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s his own.

 

“Are you hurt...?” 

 

She moves towards him, but he jerks back, refusing to let her come near him. 

 

“I’m fine,” he snaps, through gritted teeth. He’s anything but, his eyes glittering with rage and every muscle in his jaw taut with tension. 

 

“He’s not,” he continues, gesturing to the man slumped against his side, barely able to keep his eyes open. “Help him.”

 

Reluctantly, she turns to the other man, and then instinct takes over. Nyko shouts out orders in English, for her benefit, and the room falls into a tense, focused silence as they work on the wounded. It takes hours. Hours of near misses, strangled cries and grisly wounds that will leave some disfigured for life, but they all live. The overwhelming sense of relief she feels at that startles her. These men would have loved nothing more than to see life bleed out of her just weeks ago, some might even still enjoy that. These men that have her friends’ blood on their hands have been responsible for all the pain and fear she has felt since she landed on Earth. Yet now her hands are stained red with their blood and all she feels is relief that she could help save them. 

 

She shakes off the thought, not ready to unpack the complexity of the feelings simmering just below consciousness. She scrubs her hands clean, meticulously and deliberately slow. Even though she’s practically dead on her feet she has to force herself not to run up the hill, placing one foot in front of the other with measured steps. 

 

She finds him in their room, trying and failing at patching himself up. His armour and shirt is off, his fingers running over his bare, bruised ribs. His face is twisted in agony, but as soon as he sees her he schools his face into familiar, stony lines, as if he is impervious to pain. She scoffs lightly at him, noting to herself that he’s pulled the arrow clean out of his own leg. There is no way that wasn’t excruciatingly painful. 

 

He’s got a sword resting on top of the embers of the fire, the blade glowing hot, but he makes no move to reach for it. There is a bottle of moonshine on the table, and she guesses he’s been working up the courage to cauterise the wound himself. He catches her eyes moving from the blade to his knee, and there is a flash of sudden resolve on his face, as if he needs to prove a point to her. 

 

“Don’t be stupid,” she snaps, as he reaches for the sword. “Here, let me help.” 

 

She motions for him to turn towards her, reaching for the med kit in her pack. He trows her an unimpressed look, but he can’t quite pull it off as he tries to suppress a wince. 

 

“Unless you want a big scar on your leg?” she challenges, and she sees his eyes flash with something she can’t quite place. She wouldn’t actually put it past him to consider a scar like that something of a trophy. She’s seen the silvery scars that litter his body. 

 

He grunts noncommittally, but he doesn’t grab the sword. Instead he turns slightly towards her. It’s a small concession, but with him every tiny victory feels like a momentous win. 

 

His hand catches her wrist, turns it to expose the bloodied sleeve. 

 

“Did anyone...”

 

“Everyone is alive,” she confirms, ignoring the way the heat of his fingers sear her skin. 

 

He nods slowly, dipping his head a little, his eyelashes drooping. She recognises that deep relief, that burden of responsibility for other people’s lives and that insurmountable sense of guilt when someone gets hurt on your watch. It’s bigger than self preservation, bigger than the instinct to survive. It’s being a leader. 

 

“Take these off,” she says, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible as she tugs at his trousers.

 

He raises one eyebrow, but complies, sliding the blood soaked material off his legs. She studiously avoids reacting to his nakedness, mostly to dampen the memories from last night that have been threatening to reappear ever since she started walking up the hill again. In the end it isn’t so hard to forget about that when there are streaks of dark red blood trickling down his leg and a deep gash a couple of inches wide just above his knee. 

 

“This is gonna need stitches,” she says, mostly to herself as she examines the wound with light fingers. 

 

“No shit, Princess,” he grunts, and she pokes him a little harder just so she can watch him squirm. 

 

She rummages through her med kit and is relieved to find a local anaesthetic. She’s still reeling from having to stitch up Finn that time, before the Ark came down, when it was just a bunch of kids against a grounder army and every day was about clinging to survival any way they could. Thankfully the warriors she had worked on earlier had all been passed out and oblivious to her needle digging into their flesh. 

 

As she fills up a syringe, Bellamy visibly recoils. 

 

“It will only hurt a little,” she says, and makes sure she adds a good dose of snark to her voice.

 

His reaction is exactly as predicted, he sets his jaw in determined lines, accepting the challenge he thinks she issued. He eyes the needle with suspicion, but she knows he won’t question her for fear of looking weak in front of her. She slides it into his leg, gets at the wound from several angles. She holds her breath when she goes in a final time, it’s close to the bone and she knows it will hurt like hell. His fingers curl for a moment where they rest on his legs, but his face is carefully controlled. They both breathe a sigh of relief when she pulls the needle back out.

 

She grabs the bottle of moonshine and cleans the wound as best she can. Her cheeks flush and her neck glows with heat as she works, as though the pain that he feels radiates through her. She takes a swig from the bottle herself, for good measure, before offering it to him. It shouldn’t hurt that much with the local anaesthetic, but she hopes it will relax him a little at least. He takes several deep gulps but his face remains tense and hard. 

 

“What happened?” she asks, as she threads a needle with the thick, black thread. 

 

“Azgeda,” he says sombrely, and she already guessed as much but talking is distracting him from the needle sinking into his skin. “It was an ambush, we had no chance. They were waiting for us on the way to Polis."

 

She ties off the first stitch in a neat knot, but Bellamy isn’t even looking at his leg anymore, his mind already on war.

 

“So it’s started,” she sighs, starting on the next stitch. 

 

“ _Heda_ decides if it starts,” he says, a hint of frustration on his voice. 

 

It’s the war he’s been waiting all his life for, and it’s like he can’t wait for it to start, now that he has technology on his side. 

 

“Kane is in Polis,” she mumbles, focusing intently on the needle piercing his skin. “They’ll know something is wrong when you don’t turn up.”

 

He just nods sagely, like he already expected her to have sent instructions to her people. 

 

“Nothing will happen until Lexa is convinced we will win this,” he says, and it feels like too big an admittance. 

 

He sees this war as inevitable, necessary perhaps. The way he insisted on speaking with Lexa alone tells her that perhaps he wasn’t so sure she’d make the decision to declare war on Azgeda. That maybe he didn’t want to lose face in front of her. It puts their alliance in a different light, makes her think that maybe he wasn’t as against it as he led her to believe. That he never considered them as pathetic an opponent as he claimed they were. 

 

“And will we?” 

 

The word feels foreign in her mouth, the idea of his people and her people acting as one so unlikely that her first instinct is to take it back. 

 

“That depends on you,” he mutters, so low she’s not sure she heard him right. She’s starting to think he's had far more of that moonshine than she initially thought. 

 

She finishes another stitch in silence, tying the tread into a tidy knot. She can feel his eyes on her, gaging her response. 

 

“Maybe you should think about recovering from your wounds before you go starting another war,” she deflects, not ready to articulate how conflicted she feels about the possibility war. 

 

On one hand, the thought of her people dying under the hands of Azgeda fills her with anger and a primal need for revenge that scares her a little. On the other, more rational hand, she knows resources are low, knows her people are tired of fighting, and if she’s brutally honest, she doesn’t know that they would win. She doesn’t tell her husband any of this, just pushes the needle firmly through his skin one final time, surveying the row of neat stitches on his flushed skin. 

 

“I can’t even feel it anymore,” he says, frowning. “What did you put in me?”

 

“Just something to take away the pain,” she shrugs, placing a fresh bandage carefully over his wound. 

 

His eyes are wide and focused intently on her. It makes her shift uncomfortably on her knees in front of him. She hadn’t noticed how compromising her position was while she was focused on helping him. Now however, she realises she's kneeling between his legs, eye level with his crotch. 

 

“Thank you.”

 

His voice is gravelly, pitched low just like it was last night. She shouldn’t still be thinking about it. She shouldn’t still ache with the memory of it. She shouldn’t flex her hand around his good leg, or let her eyes drop or rub her legs together just to drive that ache away. 

 

“Let me take a look at those,” she tries, clearing her throat and reaching out to inspect the cuts on his face. 

 

He catches her wrist before she can make contact, forcing her to meet his eyes. The air is heavy, intoxicating, and she feels a little unsteady under his gaze. He drops his eyes, lets them linger on her chest. The breath he lets out is hot on her face, a little shaky.

 

“ _Don’t._ ”

 

Her voice is small, unconvincing. He doesn’t look up, still clutches her wrist tightly. She’s fully clothed but he looks at her like he can see right through the layers.

 

“Don’t what?”

 

_Don’t look at me like you want to destroy me_ , she thinks, cheeks flushing, neck tingling. 

 

“Look at me like that.”

 

He chuckles almost soundlessly, eyes slowly dragging back up to meet hers.  

 

“Like what?” he says, feigning innocence with his words but there is nothing innocent about the way he stares at her. “Like how a man might look at his _wife_?”

 

The word feels heavy with implication, rings of possession. It makes it clear that the boundaries have shifted, that the line between political alliance and consumed marriage has been crossed. She hadn’t realised it as it happened, but she’s tied herself to _him_ now, the man, not the deal. 

 

“I’m here because of the alliance.”

 

She forces some conviction into her voice, straightens her back and tilts her jaw up towards him, tries to gain some ground. He just scoffs, flexes his fingers around her wrist and drops his other hand to her waist, spreading his fingers over the small of her back. 

 

“I told you, last night didn’t mean anything.”

 

His eyes are almost black, his lips slightly parted. He doesn’t flinch this time, just lets his thumb run big circles along her ribs, just barely grazing her breast. 

 

“This doesn’t mean anything either,” he says, slowly letting his thumb circle her nipple, softly padding over the stiff peak. 

 

Her body responds immediately, back swaying and pushing her tits up into his hand. Her cunt clenches, a heavy heat spreading to her gut, making her push down towards the floor, down towards friction. He lets her hand drop, and instead of pushing to her feet and ending it right there and then, she finds it curling around his calf, her fingers digging into his flesh as he increases the pressure on her nipple. 

 

“This is a bad idea,” she breathes, eyes fluttering and her mouth falling open as his hand moves to the waistband of her trousers. 

 

Because they’re on the precipice of war. Because he’s wounded. Because they’re allies, they’re not… _this_. Her breathing comes out hard, a low whine stuck in the back of her throat. 

 

“Why?” he murmurs softly, his fingers sliding into her pants and finding her slick and waiting. 

 

He lets out a soft gasp when he finally connects with her heat, pulling her up and closer with his other hand, slipping a finger into her cunt easily and pumping it slowly. Her head falls back, her knees fall open, giving him more access. His thumb grazes her clit and she can’t help the low moan that falls from her lips.

 

“I forget,” she whispers, closing her eyes and letting him slip another finger into her. 

 

He works her slow but mean, keeping her suspended on her knees between his legs with firm pressure on her clit and a careful flick of his wrist. She tries to grind down, to make him move faster, but his grip on her waist is strong and she ends up uselessly jerking against his hand.

 

Her head falls forward, meeting his forehead as he rucks her up slowly and steadily, her breath mingling with his. Her eyes fall open, meeting the black depths of his. He circles his thumb over her clit, making her shudder against him. 

 

It’s much too much, much too slow. It should be fast and hard and desperate and easy to dismiss as basic human instinct in the morning. It shouldn’t be slow and deliberate and intimate like this.

 

“Just… not so slow,” she pants, desperate.

 

“Whatever the hell you want, Princess,” he huffs, sliding a third finger into her, circling his thumb hard and fast over her clit. 

 

His fingers sting as they stretch and fill her, giving her the edge she wanted, needed, to justify this. He ignites a trail from her cunt up her spine, a sharp heat that grips the back of her skull and makes her let out the whine that has been trying to escape for a while now. 

 

“That’s right,” he whispers into her neck, letting his lips glide hotly over her skin, his teeth grazing tendons. “Let me hear you, Princess.”

 

He sinks his teeth into the crook of her neck, the sharp bite soothed by the wet glide of his tongue. He crooks his fingers and drags a nail over her clit and she gasps for air as she comes hard. Her moan is loud and sharp and devastating, her back bowing and her hands grasping at his head and pulling him down with her through fistfuls of hair.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” she breathes, his fingers still filling her up, her cunt pulsing around them. 

 

“My turn,” he growls into her ear, pulling out of her abruptly.

 

He gets up on his feet, dragging her up with him, keeping her close with a strong arm around her waist. She’s lightheaded, a little unsteady on her feet and floppy against him. Her reactions are too slow to even protest as he pulls her shirt up and off, her mind too dull to focus on anything other than his lips closing around her nipple as he pulls her bra down and off her arms. 

 

He’s not gentle, he’s not slow. He sucks on her nipple hard and delicious, wet fingers plucking at her other one, twisting and twirling and tweaking. She’s soft and pliable in his arms, arching into him as she feels his hard cock trapped against her stomach. She can smell herself on his fingers, salty and musky and when he curls his tongue around her other nipple, already coated in her juices, she feels her knees buckle a little. 

 

“ _Please_ ,” she whines, conceding ground, giving too much away, but she needs this, needs _more_. 

 

He growls lowly into her breast, the sharp sting of his teeth around her nipple making her jolt in his arms. He pulls off her, twists her around so her back is flush against him, then walks her over to the dining table. She leans forward, resting her hands on the solid wood as he reaches his arms around her to pull down her trousers. 

 

She hums with anticipation as he runs his hands slowly up her legs and thighs, the rough skin scraping against her and sending spikes of pleasure straight to her cunt. Once upright, he nudges her legs further apart with his feet, moves her hands further onto the table so she is forced to bend over. 

 

She feels him against her, the hairs on his thighs scraping against the smooth skin on the back of hers. His fingers are splayed over her hips, in the same place he bruised her last night. His cock is thick and solid against her ass as he guides it up against her slit, coating it in her juices and sliding it between her cheeks. He flattens a palm against her spine, pushing her further down onto the table, the rough surface of the wood scraping over her sensitive nipples.

 

The drag of his dick over her cunt and ass in combination with the grating of wood against her tits makes heat pool deep in her stomach, makes her heave little sobs of pleasure as he finds a slick rhythm. 

 

“Shhh, I’ve got you,” he pants, fighting to keep control of his breathing. 

 

She curls her fingers around the edge of the table, holding on tightly as he finally slams into her, deep and hard. She lets out a little yelp as he hits her deep, a dull pain shooting up into her stomach and exploding into pleasure. He builds slowly, dragging his cock out of her with controlled restraint, before snapping his hips and driving back into her, pulling her up with each hit. The jolt of pain she feels each time he slams into her brings tears to her eyes and spikes of pleasure that makes her cunt cling to him tighter and tighter. 

 

“ _Shit_ ,” he mutters, fucking into her faster, gripping her hips harder. 

 

The wave of pleasure that is building in her is so strong, so consuming that she has no control over the sounds she makes. She’s too far gone to feel embarrassed of how loud or long her moans are, the pressure just keeps on building, looking for an escape.

 

His thrusts start to become erratic, a little jerky, just as he snakes an arm around her and thumbs at her clit. She feels his shaky exhale against her spine, heavy and wet as he flicks her clit over and over until her legs start to shake. The pressure builds and builds until it breaks like a dam, heat flooding her, darkness swallowing her. She arches into him, clenching around him, draining him for everything he’s got until all she can see is stars dancing in front of her eyes. 

 

He collapses onto her, the weight of him grinding her into the table. He pushes her hair away from her eyes, twining it around his fist and pulling her head to the side so he can slide a hot, greedy tongue into her mouth. It’s clumsy and awkward, but she feels herself reaching out, meeting his tongue and licking the aftershocks out of him hungrily, like she can milk even more pleasure out of him. 

 

They stay like that for as long as it’s comfortable, weighed down by exhaustion and satisfaction, heavy and lazy against the surface of the table where they’ve never even shared as much as a meal. He stays inside her until he’s soft and until the sweat glues them painfully together.

 

She feels raw and tired when he eventually pulls back, sliding his arms around her to pull her back up. He hands her back her underwear and shirt wordlessly, and she dresses in silence while he sits back down on the stool in front of the fire, carefully fingering the bandage on his leg. 

 

“Are.. are you ok?” she manages, the emotional turmoil inside her not enough to suppress the healer in her. 

 

“Can’t feel a thing, Princess,” he shrugs, a tight smile on his face. 

 

It’s a side of him she hasn’t seen before, one that is hard to reconcile with the general, the enemy she’s always seen him as. Or as the man who fucked her senseless mere moments ago. 

 

“Then I guess this is nothing,” she says, soaking a bandage with moonshine and dabbing at the cuts on his face.

 

He winces almost imperceptibly as she cleans his wounds, but is careful to control his expression. He lets his hands curl around the backs of her thighs as she works, stroking his thumbs softly against her skin. 

 

It feels more jarring, this feeling of intimacy between them, than giving into the physical need for him. The softness of the moment, the stillness of it and the soothing drag of his thumbs over her skin feels like a bigger concession than any she’s given him already. It feels like letting control go. It feels like stepping onto the edge of a cliff and taking a step forward. It feels like taking a breath in the middle of a battle and preparing for a sword to slice right through her. It feels like defeat. 

 

They’re moments away from war, death and destruction at their doorstep, yet the burn of his skin against hers feels more devastating than anything else right now. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You still don’t trust me.” It’s less of an accusation and more of a statement, but she can feel the frustration rising in her chest.
> 
> "Why would I?” she scoffs, incredulous. "Because you haven’t tried to kill me for a whole month?"
> 
> He doesn’t rise to the bait. 
> 
> "Our people are allies now.” She could scream at that word, at the hollow promises it held and the new conflict it has delivered instead. "You’ve seen our situation here, you know what we are up against. Your guns would help turn our fortunes."
> 
> "It didn’t turn ours."
> 
> He pauses at that, bends his head as if he’s weathering a storm.
> 
> "I’ve been your enemy, Wanheda,” he says, careful. The name feels wrong coming from his lips, feels sharp and cutting, like he knows exactly how to inflict the most damage. "I’d rather go to war beside you than against you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I KNOW, another ridiculously long wait between updates, I'm so sorry. Life has, once again, been unpredictable. The general mood in the fandom has also not made the words come any faster, but I promise I'm still here and I'm still writing. So here's that thing you were possibly waiting for, some real talk with Octavia. And a lil smut, cause I wouldn't be me if I didn't add just a lil bit.

 

She wakes up the next morning with a jerk, her stomach swooping with a sense that something isn’t as it should be. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. She’s had more sleepless nights here on Earth than not. It takes a while for the feeling to settle, to reveal itself for what it is. Guilt. It’s not the same kind of guilt that has been following her around like a shadow, the aching guilt she feels every day for taking lives and not saving others, the kind that crashes back into her as soon as she thinks she has escaped it. That guilt is familiar, easy to rationalise, easy to understand. The guilt that seeps into her bones now is slippery, hard to make sense of. What she’s doing with Bellamy, what she has done more than once, feels like it wasn’t supposed to happen, like it was never part of the deal. Their marriage is a political alliance she had no choice but to enter, an archaic grounder tradition that is supposed to ensure peace and prosperity for both their people. She was never expected to consummate the marriage. It was never supposed to be real. And the worst part is, she thinks it might happen again. 

 

Her eyes drop to her sleeping husband, his breathing long and deep. He sleeps heavier than she’s ever seen him, the adrenaline well and truly out of his body by now. The cuts on his face are red and shiny, his skin raised into jagged mountain ridges, but his jaw has lost its sharp edge in sleep, his face soft and unguarded. There is a dark purple bruise blooming across his ribs like a watercolour bleeding into paper. She has to stop her fingers from tracing over the pattern it leaves. Her eyes trail a path down the expanse of smooth skin over his stomach, down past where his hips angle inwards and a thatch of dark hair is shamelessly on display. Her eyes dart away, making a detour down his sturdy thigh and landing on the bandage she put on last night. Angry red skin flares out beneath the dressing, which is spotted with dark red blood. He’s gonna feel that when he wakes up, and she winces a little at the thought. She lets her eyes flit back up his body, lingering on his face as she takes a big, sobering breath. It feels a lot like bracing herself before a fall. 

 

She staggers down the hill, her body stiff with exhaustion. The village is quiet, a dense fog just barely hanging over the cabin rooftops, the panicked commotion of last night replaced with a tense anticipation. The few faces she sees on her way down are drawn, guarded, maybe less openly hostile now that focus has been shifted to another enemy. It’s a cold comfort being the lesser of two evils. When she walks into the sick bay Nyko is already working on patients, nodding tiredly at her but not stopping to acknowledge her further. She wonders idly if he’s slept at all, and then the guilt spikes, hard and sharp, as her mind wanders to what she did last night. 

 

They haven’t lost anyone during the night, she establishes, her shoulders sinking a touch. The little boy is breathing slow and steady, a rasp still humming in the background, but his forehead is cool and his lips a healthy pink. His mother is asleep with her head resting against his cot, her hands grasping at his tiny form even in her sleep. She wipes his brow gingerly with a damp cloth, careful not to disturb their sleep. She makes quick work of pushing another dose of antibiotics into his veins, his brow barely knitting as the needle breaks skin. She releases her bottom lip from under her teeth in relief, trying not to think about why it feels sore. 

 

She surveys the room next, notes the extent of the injuries, that the store room is even emptier than yesterday. She checks her own med kit, the half empty bottles clinking hollowly against each other. Resolve forms like a fist in her gut, her jaw clenching in determination. She rushes out of the sick bay, promising Nyko to be back later. Around her the village is slowly waking up, but she barely notices, her focus solely on getting her mother on the radio. 

 

* * *

 

Her purposeful stride comes to an abrupt halt when she sees Bellamy already on his feet outside one of the cabins closest to their quarters. Her first instinct is to scold him for walking on his leg. Her second instinct is to hurry past him before he sees her. When he opens his mouth, all she can do is stay rooted in her spot hoping she’s far enough away not to be noticed. 

 

“O, this is suicide,” he says. His voice is gruff, but it is unmistakably a plea. 

 

His sister is saddling up her horse, dark paint bleeding down from her sharp eyes, both her blades crossed behind her back and her blood spattered knife tucked into the sheath at her hip. She’s got that terrifying expression on her face again, a promise of death and destruction. 

 

“I have to get him.” Her voice is hard, almost accusatory. 

 

It takes her a little while to do the maths, but it dawns on her that not everyone from the doomed Polis mission have returned. Rivo is one of them. The big man with the tattoos on his neck is the other. Lincoln, she remembers. 

 

“You can’t seriously think a solo rescue mission in Azgeda territory is a good idea,” he snaps, the sudden rush of anger betraying his desperation. “You’ll get yourself killed!”

 

“I’m going, Bellamy,” she says calmly, turning away from him to fasten her bed roll to the saddle. 

 

“Please, O,” he croaks, voice breaking. 

 

He staggers towards her, his leg clearly causing him pain. He places a hand on her shoulder almost hesitantly, but she doesn’t turn to face him. 

 

“I almost lost you once already, I can’t do it again.”

 

The intimacy of the moment is like a splash of cold water to her face. She almost backs away, like the moment is too private for her to overhear. But then Octavia turns towards him, her face softening as she pulls him into a tight embrace and she can’t tear her eyes away.

 

“I’ll be careful,” she mumbles into his shoulder, so softly that she can barely hear the words. 

 

She watches as he pulls her close, the tendons in his arms flexing under his tight grip. She’s spent so long fighting she can barely recognise what’s in front of her. Love. Fierce, heavy, intoxicating love. It’s not tinged with guilt like her mother’s love for her, nor with idealism like Finn had looked at her with eyes full of. It’s not tainted with regret like Wells’ or scarred with the hint of betrayal that she and Raven can’t quite make disappear, however much they want to. It’s intense, unconditional and bone crushingly familiar to her. She drags a thumb slowly over her father’s watch, her bones aching to feel his arms close around her again. 

 

“I’ll go with you,” he announces into his sister’s hair, defiant. 

 

“Bell, you can barely walk,” Octavia chides, pulling away. 

 

“I can ride,” he counters, his face contorting in pain as he turns towards the stables. 

 

It unsettles her to see how little he values his life over hers, how irrational he becomes when faced with a threat towards his sister. It’s information she would’ve used against him when they were at war, but now that they’re supposed to be on the same side it’s a worrying display of weakness.

 

He doesn’t get to act on it however, since he’s not hobbled two steps before Octavia has mounted her horse and turned away from him. 

 

“Octavia!” 

 

She doesn’t stop at his pained cry, doesn’t look back as she disappears into the grey morning, her face cast in steel. He looks lost, uncertain almost. It makes her hesitate a second too long, lingering in her spot rather than continuing up the hill like she should’ve done a long time ago. 

 

He spots her almost immediately of course, his eyes meeting hers and immediately flickering away. She drops her head, inexplicably ashamed, like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t. 

 

“I should look at your leg,” she says, looking away from him, fighting the blush creeping up her neck. 

 

This time he doesn’t protest. 

 

* * *

 

She sits him down in the great hall, cleans his wounds in silence and uses one of the three vials of antibiotics she’s got left. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at her, doesn’t try to touch her. He barely winces when she dabs a soft cloth soaked in alcohol over his stitches, but she can see his jaw tensing and his thigh muscles tightening under her hands. 

 

“You shouldn’t walk around on this,” she chides, but her tone is careful, a little hesitant to kick him while he’s down.

 

“You didn’t have any complaints last night,” he retorts, but there’s no heat behind it, no real goading. 

 

She sighs, decides to tamp down on the urge to take a swipe at him. 

 

"I need to speak to my mother,” she says instead.  

 

She’s not sure why she’s even telling him when she could just radio her without ever mentioning it.

 

“Are you asking for guns?” he asks, suddenly more focused again.  

 

“No. Medicine.” 

 

“Your medicine won’t do us any good if we’re all dead,” he deadpans. 

 

“A few weeks ago you didn’t want me to radio my own mother because you thought we’d bring our guns here, but now you want them?"

 

He lifts his eyebrows at her, studying her intently for a moment, and she considers telling him about the little boy in the med bay, about the empty store room, about the very real danger of infection in his own wound. But he cocks his head and squints his eyes at her, and something almost like hurt flashes over his face and it startles her. 

 

 "You still don’t trust me.” It’s less of an accusation and more of a statement, but she can feel the frustration rising in her chest.

 

"Why would I?” she scoffs, incredulous. "Because you haven’t tried to kill me for a whole month?"

 

He doesn’t rise to the bait. 

 

"Our people are allies now.” She could scream at that word, at the hollow promises it held and the new conflict it has delivered instead. "You’ve seen our situation here, you know what we are up against. Your guns would help turn our fortunes."

 

"It didn’t turn ours."

 

He pauses at that, bends his head as if he’s weathering a storm.

 

"I’ve been your enemy, _Wanheda_ ,” he says, careful. The name feels wrong coming from his lips, feels sharp and cutting, like he knows exactly how to inflict the most damage. "I’d rather go to war beside you than against you."

 

She considers the months of bad blood between them, the losses they’ve both suffered, the deaths at her hands, and the ones at his. She considers the parts of herself she had to lose just to survive, and just how close she came to death. 

 

"I’d rather not go to war at all.”

 

She wishes her voice didn’t sound so small.  

 

"Even if Azgeda slaughtered your people?” he presses, his words brushing against that rage that is still simmering beneath her skin. "How is that any different from your war against Trikru?”

 

She bristles at that. They had tried to find common ground, _Finn_ had feverishly, and perhaps foolishly advocated for peace and she had backed him until the very last moment when it had become apparent that there wasn’t going to be a solution. 

 

"I didn’t choose that war, it was you who brought it to our doorstep.” She means Trikru but can’t help the way her hand pushes at his shoulder. He doesn’t flinch. "All we ever wanted was to stay alive." 

 

The frustration rises in her voice, making her high pitched and accusatory. How Lexa ever thought Skaikru and Trikru’s animosity could be put to bed by joining her and Bellamy is beyond her. Too much has happened, too many lives have been lost, too much of her own innocence has fallen casualty in their war. And yet here he is, asking her to commit, asking her to put her people’s lives on the line for his. 

 

"Only the dead get to see the end of war, Clarke. You don’t always get to choose not to fight.”

 

His words sink like stones in her gut. She never had a choice. It’s slowly dawning on her that she still doesn't have one. 

 

Still, she radios her mother in front of him, only asking for the medical supplies they need, hoping Arkadia can spare them. He stares at her from his throne the whole time, his trousers still unfastened around his waist. His eyes are dark and heavy on her, full of reproach, but he doesn’t interrupt. When Abby asks how to get the supplies to them, he gives curt instructions. When she tells her mother to send them with armed guards he doesn’t balk, just tells them where his guards will ride out to meet them. 

 

It’s not an apology when she climbs carefully onto his lap, she tells herself. She’s not trying to appease him as she pulls her shirt over her head and leans down to slide her tongue against the seam of his lips. It’s not compensation when she grinds her hips into him, and it’s not acceptance when he hardens beneath her. She doesn’t know what it is when he pulls his head back and makes her chase him, makes her hold him in place with a hand wrapped around his neck. She nips at his lips, laves him with small kitten licks until he relents and lets her in, his tongue furiously pulsing against hers. His hands quickly find skin, searing trails into her, digging red, angry ravines into her flesh, making her lightheaded with want. She becomes a bit desperate, a bit careless, her ass grazing against his leg as she tries to find friction. He hisses in pain and she jerks off him, but he pulls her back in quickly, grabbing at her leggings. He’s as desperate as she is. 

 

When she’s finally naked before him, he pauses for a moment, his fucked out, dark eyes dragging slowly up her. She doesn’t move, lets his eyes linger, lets the animosity between them simmer and ignite, lets hostility mix with the heady need that stretches between them. She climbs back onto his lap, determined fingers pulling his pants down just enough for his cock to spring free. She slips his cock between her folds, sliding up and down slowly, slicking him up. It takes all her willpower not to whine as his cock bumps against her clit, bunching his shirt into her fists as if holding on to something will keep the pleasure at bay. The tendons in his throat tense as she rucks him up, but he’s playing the game as well, refusing to even give her the satisfaction of a soft grunt. 

 

When she sinks down on him, it feels like relief more than anything, his cock filling her almost painfully. She rides him fast while he’s still on his throne, her rhythm harsh and unrelenting. He keeps one hand on her jaw so she’s forced to look at him the entire time, neither of them backing down, neither of them saying a word. When she comes she drops her head to his shoulder and stays there until her breathing returns to normal and she feels him soften inside her. The defeated look on his face afterwards sends another pang of guilt to her stomach, but this time it’s harder to locate the source. 

 

* * *

 

The next few days they wait, suspended in time until Octavia returns or supplies arrive from Arkadia, whichever comes first. Neither of them are good at waiting. They both get a little more impatient, a little meaner, desperate to keep helplessness from settling in their bones. When he fucks her from behind at night, he pulls rough at her nipples until she yelps in pain. Once, when she’s shaking and spent, she pushes his face away when he tries to kiss her. 

 

They’re constantly at odds over the smallest thing, frustration bubbling just under the surface. He’s a bad patient. She’s a worse carer. She has no idea what the right amount of concern is, when she can’t quite be his wife, nor his nurse. She changes his bandages and uses the last vial of antibiotics with her teeth gritted and hands that are most definitely not light nor careful. She ignores the way he flinches, but constantly worries about his pain levels. Mostly she just gets annoyed when he puts too much weight on his leg, even if it is to fuck her senseless. 

 

On the forth day, just when she thinks they might actually kill each other soon, there is a commotion in the village below, loud voices rising in alarm. Bellamy is out of the door before she has a chance to tell him to take it slow. She even has to jog a little to keep up with him. There is a crowd of people by the dirt road that marks the entrance to the village, but it parts wordlessly for him, the shouting dying down to a low murmur. Octavia slides off her horse, her hair matted with mud and blood. She struggles to support Lincoln who is slumped over on top of her horse, barely conscious. 

 

Bellamy jerks forward, eyes trained on his sister, but she brushes him off, focused only on Lincoln. 

 

“Get Nyko,” she growls, desperate, almost pained. 

 

As Clarke gets closer she sees why. Both of Lincoln’s eyes are swollen shut, one side of his face grotesquely deformed. Dried blood and grime almost wipes out all distinguishing features in his face. He is shirtless, the many small cuts littering his torso exposed to the elements. There are some deeper cuts near his kidneys that are worrisome. He holds his hands gingerly against his chest even in his semi conscious state, some fingernails missing and some bones obviously broken or dislocated. He’s clearly been brutally tortured, and it makes her stomach turn a little. 

 

Several villagers rush forward to help him off the horse, but they stand aside to let her examine him. 

 

“ _Get Nyko_ ,” Octavia repeats, not bothering to conceal the anger in her voice. 

 

Behind her Bellamy shouts out instructions in trigedasleng, but she is undeterred, running her fingers over Lincoln’s swollen flesh to assess the damage. His skin is dangerously hot, even in the cool drizzle that fills the air. His breathing is pained and erratic, his pulse unsteady. Lincoln lets out a low whine before coughing violently, blood spattering all over her. 

 

She jerks back, wiping at her face. Nyko arrives at her side, his eyes wide and alarmed. As soon as he gets a look at Lincoln he drops his hands, like he’s afraid to touch him. He mumbles under his breath in words she doesn’t recognise, but it sounds like swearing. 

 

“What?” she questions quietly, alarmed by the fear in his face. 

 

He says a word in his language that she’s never heard, but it makes both Bellamy and Octavia suck in their breath. 

 

“Are you sure?” Bellamy says, quiet. 

 

Nyko nods quickly, but doesn’t look up, his mind already racing ahead.

 

“Poison,” he mutters to Clarke, but she can tell that the word doesn’t cover it. “It grows like a fire, kills like an army” he adds, and then Clarke understands.

 

“A virus,” she says, mostly to herself. She makes the calculations in her head quickly.

 

“We need to quarantine him and everyone he’s been in contact with,” she says, and it spurs Nyko into action. 

 

Lincoln, Octavia and the villagers who helped him to the ground are all rushed to the sick bay, while the current patients are quickly ushered away to safer locations. Nyko won’t let her go near them, but she makes him promise that the little boy and his mother will be taken care of. The fear in his eyes doesn’t leave, and it makes her spine tingle unpleasantly, 

 

Bellamy just stares at her from across the room, once again helpless, the anger flaring hot in his nostrils. 

 

“Get out,” she snaps, perhaps a little more harsh than she means to. “You can’t do anything here, and you can’t catch whatever this is.”

 

“It’s an attack,” he barks back, but he does start to back out towards the door. “Azgeda brings death to our doorstep.”

 

She’s not sure exactly what he means but he’s gone before she can ask, and all of a sudden she’s left alone with her questions and well over half a dozen quarantined grounders. 

 

It doesn’t take long for the others to start showing symptoms, and pretty soon she has five patients who are running a dangerously high fever, sweat beading on their foreheads and their eyes going glassy and bloodshot. She’s not sure if Octavia is immune or just stubborn, but she manages to stay on her feet, wiping brows and forcing liquids down their throats while she attends to Lincoln's injuries. She has to reset a few bones and run a couple of stitches over some of the deeper cuts, but he’s too far gone to even wince. She cleans him up the best she can, but her med kit is empty and there is almost nothing she can do to alleviate her pain besides making a strong tea out of red seaweed. It’s not enough, she knows, and it brings back some uncomfortable memories of the first few weeks on earth. Lincoln doesn’t moan with the pain like Jasper had. It makes her worry more, not sure which will kill him first, the injuries or the virus. 

 

Octavia watches over Lincoln with a fevered intensity that’s as intimidating as the menacing glare she usually reserves for her only. She runs shaky fingers over his bandaged hands, dabs a cold compress so delicately over his swollen brow that she has to do a double take. Her gentleness is in stark contrast with the dark warpaint still smeared around her eyes and the fresh blood smeared over the hilt of her dagger. 

 

“Is he going to be ok?” she asks, voice unsteady, breaking the eerie silence that has fallen over the room. They are the only two people still standing. 

 

She reaches over and checks Lincoln’s pulse. It’s erratic and racing, but his breathing is steady. 

 

“I don’t know,” she says, honestly. “Whatever this virus is, I haven’t seen it before, I’m not sure what it does.”

 

“It’s a weapon,” Octavia says, sombrely. “A blood fever designed to weaken the enemy.”

 

“Like the one you used on us?” she asks, remembering the four graves she had dug herself after that day. 

 

“Worse,” she says, her face starting to look pale. There are beads of sweat on her top lip. “But similar.”

 

“Turns out it didn’t work as well as we wanted,” she continues, a lopsided smile turning into a grimace as she has to steady herself against the cot. “You were still alive when we got there.”

 

A full body shiver racks through her, and she’s not sure if it is the virus that steals her breath away or the horror settling in her bones. 

 

“I can still smell it, you know,” Octavia carries on, unperturbed. “My skin melting and my hair burning."

 

A strong acrid smell fills her nostrils, sensory memory bringing back that day so vividly as if it were happening right now. 

 

“It wasn’t personal,” she mumbles, but it doesn’t sound true even to her. 

 

“Bellamy went around your camp with Lincoln,” Octavia continues, ignoring her. “Crawled into some tunnel to try to sneak up on you and kill you. That’s how he escaped.”

 

It hits like a ton of bricks. She always knew he was trying to kill them, but she never knew he got so close to killing her.  

 

“He screamed so loud,” Octavia recalls, her brow now covered in a fine sheen, her body shivering. “When he found me, my skin came off in his hands. I’ve never heard anyone scream like that.”

 

Octavia sways in her seat, her hair stuck to her forehead. Her eyelids are droopy and her pupils dilated, and suddenly her body goes limp. She catches her before she slides to the floor, guiding her towards one of the beds. 

 

“You need to rest,” she says quietly, removing her weapons and her leather armour before resting her back against the furs. Her pulse is racing and her brow is burning up, and she’s too weak to protest as she puts a cool compress on her forehead and makes her swallow down some bark tea. 

 

“You know, war isn’t about who’s right,” Octavia mumbles, hazy. “It’s about who’s left.”

 

She wonders if it’s worth it, all the sacrifices, all the dead friends, all the guilt, just to be the last one standing. She’s been telling herself it is to keep herself going, that any and all means are justified to protect her people, bearing it so they don’t have to. She just never had to live with the consequences of her actions in a literal sense. 

 

* * *

 

 

She doesn’t sleep all night. She starts to feel warm around two in the morning, but continues to check on everyone and forcing drops of bark tea down their throats. She doesn’t get scared until they start dying. The first to go is a young warrior only a couple years older than her, a strong, healthy man. Then a middle-aged man she recognises from the village council. Then they follow in quick succession until there’s only the blacksmith’s son, Lincoln, Octavia and her left. Everything she tried has proved useless, the raging fever escalating so quickly she barely had time to assess the severity of the situation. The backs of her knees start to sweat, her hair is already wet and curled, itchy against her neck. At some point Lincoln starts bleeding from his ears, but she can’t tell if it’s from his injuries or from the virus. 

 

At the first crack of dawn Bellamy is outside, his voice clear but betraying his worry as he first calls his sisters name, then hers. She staggers to the door, the cold morning air a shock to her skin as she’s shed as many layers as her modesty would allow even in her fevered state. 

 

“Clarke,” he calls out, his voice cracking on her name. “How many?”

 

“Five,” she says. Her tongue feels too thick in her mouth. 

 

“My sister?”

 

His eyes are red rimmed, she realises. She guesses he’s not slept all night either. 

 

“Alive,” she reassures him, trying to force the image of his screams as he holds the charred skin of his sister in his hands out of her head. It rolls around in her stomach and makes it hard to stand straight. “For now.”

 

He nods, relieved, the breath he lets out almost sounds like a sob. He can’t quite look her in the eye.

 

“Your mother radioed,” he says, clearing his voice. Her brain is too foggy to pause on him using their technology. “The supplies are already here.”

 

He motions towards the crates stacked up against the wall of the sick bay. 

 

“Maybe you have something for this poison?” There is hope in his eyes, a soft plea in his voice. 

 

She wants to scream at him, to say that there is no cure, no medicine for these cruel weapons they use to kill indiscriminately. Instead, she staggers towards the crates, stumbling a little. He takes a step forward, as if to steady her.

 

“Don’t,” she warns, backing away from him. 

 

“This is for the boy,” she manages, her breath short and laboured. He lets his hands drop to his sides.

 

She fishes out a box of antibiotics and syringes and gives him quick instructions to give to Nyko. She silently hopes Nyko was observant enough to administer the drugs himself. She then grabs a few bags of IV fluid and some painkillers for Lincoln, before turning back towards the door, her legs wobbly.

 

She hears him call out her name, but her ears are ringing and her vision is starting to blur, so she tries to focus on the essentials. Lincoln gets a shot of pain meds and some antibiotics for good measure, and she just manages to hook IVs into all her patients before she has to steady herself against the wall. 

 

Sweat is pouring down her back and her teeth are shattering, she misses the first two attempts at finding her own vein. She finally manages, and with a last surge of energy manages to hang the bag of fluids on a hook on the wall before she collapses onto a cot. As soon as her head hits the pillow her vision goes black. 

 

She flits in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware of muffled voices around her. She tries to tell them to stay away, desperate to contain the outbreak, but her lips won’t move. Someone places a cool palm on her burning brow, but her hand is too weak to push it away. She falls back asleep for hours and hours, and when she comes back up Bellamy is there wiping her forehead with a cloth. She thinks she must still be dreaming, so she lets him. 

 

His touch is so gentle only her dreaming mind could conjure this up. He strokes a thumb over her cheek and she leans into his touch, trying to get away from her aching bones and the throbbing pain at the base of her skull. He murmurs soft reassurances in her ear, telling her she’ll be ok, that she’ll be better soon. She can’t stop the tears forming behind her eyes, but he wipes her tears away as quickly as they appear. His touch is calming, his voice soothing and she only briefly questions why she would conjure this soft version of her husband in her fever dreams. Instead she lets his gentle hands and his warm lips against her sweat slicked skin lull her deeper into sleep, until he disappears completely again. 

 

When she wakes up properly, her eyes hurt and her neck is sore, but the fever has let up. Across the room Bellamy is by Octavia’s bedside, his eyes lighting up with something like relief when he sees that she’s awake. He crosses the room to slide her hand into his, and it feels strangely familiar, a little too much like her dream. 

 

“I got you, Princess,” he mutters, squeezing her hand softly.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, it takes both sides to build a bridge.”
> 
> She feels her eyes start to itch, eyelashes fluttering to keep them open. 
> 
> _What’s the point in building a bridge behind us only to burn the one in front of us_ , she thinks, but she’s tired. Not just sleepy, but weary to her bones, starved of hope and happiness. She should’ve known that this alliance wouldn’t have changed her path. She’s _Wanheda_ , the commander of death, a deadly weapon. You don’t tell a weapon to find peace, when war will always seek it out. 
> 
> “I wish it felt like we were building instead of destroying.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOOK AT ME! It took me like no time at all to update, I'm so proud of me lol  
> Thanks again for all your continued interest in this story, shit's about to get real so hold on to your hats. And yeah I updated the tags with ANOTHER trope that I absolutely love!

Time moves in fits and starts. She’s in and out of consciousness, a heavy fog hanging over her head making people and voices indistinct. Her bones feel like they’re weighed down with lead and her stomach churns around nothing. When she’s awake it frightens her a little, how weak she is, and the feeling of being alone behind enemy lines never quite leaves her. But then exhaustion pulls her back down under and she’s too sleepy to worry about her safety.

 

When she is able to keep her eyes open for a full hour, Bellamy brings her the radio. He doesn’t comment, just leaves the thing beside her on the bed and leaves the room, eyes fixed to the floor, jaw ticking. 

 

“Baby?”

 

Abby’s voice cracks over the radio, but it’s not the signal that fails her. 

 

“Mom, I’m ok,” she rushes to say, soothing. There’s nothing she can do to stop her mother’s tears or hers. 

 

“I almost came,” Abby breathes, anguished. “I wanted to, but Bellamy told me not to.”

 

She swallows hard, not sure if she should be grateful or angry that he kept her away.

 

“He was right, it wasn’t safe.”  

 

It’s true, it wasn’t safe for anyone, and she probably would’ve told her the same thing. She knows he was right, but it still irks her that he refused Abby’s help. Like maybe it would’ve solved a problem for him if she hadn’t survived. 

 

“There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

 

“Thank god it didn’t spread further,” her mother says sombrely, and the silence stretches between them, both aware of how jarring it is for them to be grateful for this. 

 

“Only five dead,” Abby continues, when she doesn’t say anything. “That’s incredible, all things considered.”

 

Tears slide hot against her cheeks, even five seems like too big a sacrifice and it brings back too many painful memories of vacant eyes. 

 

“None would’ve been better.”

 

"You did good baby,” Abby soothes, and it’s enough to bring a fresh wave of tears to her eyes. 

 

“I didn’t do anything.”

 

“You kept the quarantine for the first 24 hours, that seems to have contained the outbreak. You got fluids into everyone still alive. Nyko and Bellamy only had to maintain the protocol you started. You did everything right.” 

 

Abby’s voice is firm, her belief in her so fierce, and it makes her feel like she’s 10 years old again. Before everything, when life was so simple and small. The ark was her entire existence, Earth was a beautiful fantasy and she had no reason to doubt her mother’s love. Sometimes she wishes their will to survive hadn’t been so overpowering, and that they’d never left space.

 

“I wish we weren’t here again,” she sighs.

 

The line goes quiet for a moment, as if Abby is changing gears. 

 

“Kane got back from Polis yesterday,” her mother says in her chancellor voice. “Lexa has decided, and we are bound by the alliance.”

 

“War?”

 

The word feels like a loaded spring on her tongue.

 

“War.”

 

The word rings like a gunshot in her ears.

 

“Guns?”

 

“As many as we can spare. Raven is already producing bullets,” Abby says tightly. 

 

She closes her eyes and lets a shaky breath out. Her head pounds and bile rises in her throat. She can still smell burning hair and melted flesh in her nose. 

 

“Men?” 

 

She hesitates to ask, already knows it’s inevitable but still needs to hear it. 

 

“We agreed to this alliance,” Abby says, and her heart sinks. “There isn’t any other way this could’ve gone.”

 

“If I hadn’t married him…”

 

“We’d still be at war.” 

 

Abby takes a deep breath and she can almost hear the steely resolve that settles in her over the radio.

 

“Baby, this isn’t what we hoped for when we entered the alliance,” Abby says, using her mom voice again. “But this was an unprovoked attack that didn’t just affect Trikru. They almost killed _you_.”

 

Her voice cracks again, and after all they’ve been through, after everything they’ve done, she wishes more than anything that her mom was there holding her. She swallows hard, tries to sit up a little in her cot, tries to make herself feel a little stronger. 

 

“Is it even our war to fight?”

 

It’s useless, she just slides back down into the furs, too weak to support her own bodyweight. 

 

“It is now. So far Bellamy’s kept his side of the bargain, and we have to keep up ours too,” her mother says, a little sadly. “You know, it takes both sides to build a bridge.”

 

She feels her eyes start to itch, eyelashes fluttering to keep them open. 

 

_What’s the point in building a bridge behind us only to burn the one in front of us_ , she thinks, but she’s tired. Not just sleepy, but weary to her bones, starved of hope and happiness. She should’ve known that this alliance wouldn’t have changed her path. She’s _Wanheda_ , the commander of death, a deadly weapon. You don’t tell a weapon to find peace, when war will always seek it out. 

 

“I wish it felt like we were building instead of destroying.”

 

* * *

 

It takes another 10 days before she’s back on her feet, during which Lexa comes and leaves the village again. She doesn’t come to the sick bay, which is just as well, but Bellamy comes to visit every night to update her. She is still exhausted, but beneath it all she feels a familiar resolve harden beneath her skin. The old armour she had to wear almost as soon as she landed comes back easily. 

 

Raven updates her on her progress, tells her when they should expect ammunition and weapons to be delivered and how many men will be arriving to help train Trikru warriors. She tastes blood on her tongue the whole time and it’s difficult for her to hold onto anything she eats right now. 

 

When she moves back into her quarters Bellamy tiptoes around her. He shoves steaming bowls of meaty broth under her nose, hovers behind her when she cleans up in the kitchen like he thinks she’s gonna fall over any second. He never leaves her alone for more than thirty minutes, coming up with feeble excuses to check up on her during the day. At night he sleeps right up against the edge of the bed, uncomfortably, seemingly afraid to touch her. 

 

It grates on her nerves, firstly because she is so obviously weakened by the virus right as they are on the precipice of war. Secondly, he got what he wanted. He got his war and his guns, and he’s got her people too, and him treating her like she’s breakable when he holds all the power only adds insult to injury. 

 

“Shouldn’t you be out preparing for a war or something?” she snaps at him, when he grabs a bowl out of her hand and starts to clean it for her. 

 

He glances at her through the corners of his eyes, face stoic, his hands carrying on cleaning. 

 

“It’s under control,” he says, calm and overbearing. 

 

His cool confidence feels more like arrogance to her, a callous disregard for the safety of not only his own people but hers. 

 

“Oh really? You've lost more than ten warriors in the last days, you’re still injured yourself.”

 

She swats a hand over his leg, not giving him enough time to cover up the wince she knew he’d pull. His jaw clenches on a hiss. 

 

“Azgeda has snuck up on you twice, I’m sure morale amongst your warriors is at an all time high.” 

 

“We have the numbers through the alliance,” he grits out though his teeth, setting the bowl to the side to dry. “Morale is just fine. And when your men and guns get here we’ll have the technology too.”

 

“We don’t have enough guns for everyone, Bellamy, and even if we did there's no guarantee we’ll win.” Her voice is sharp and angry, but it feels good to cut through the haze she’s been in and to stoke that old fire in her gut. “I know that better than anyone.”

 

His knuckles turn white on the edge of the kitchen counter, his eyes are dark and hard as flint. Anger rolls off him in waves, and she’s glad, glad she could provoke this reaction, glad she could still challenge him and feel a little more like her old self again.

 

“Our only choice is to try."

 

Frustration boils over and she flings the rough linen cloth he’d been using to clean the bowl at him. It lands square in his face with a wet, satisfying squelch.

 

“What the fuck…” he roars, before abruptly controlling himself, taking several steps back from her. His hands are raised in a mollifying gesture, though she can see them tremble with controlled rage. “You gotta stop throwing things at me.”

 

“I’ll stop throwing things when you stop gambling with my people’s lives.”

 

“We have the numbers, the technology, we have food, weapons, medicine…” he rattles off all her concerns one by one, though she can’t contain a scoff. “You’ve gone to war with a lot less, Clarke, don’t forget.”

 

“I never will.”

 

The silence between them is deafening, almost painful with the way it makes her words ring in her ears like they were bombs she’d thrown at him. He flinches, his eyes narrowing before he rips them away from her. Small drops of water fall from his hair to the floor when he turns on his heel and leaves their quarters without another look her way. 

 

She’s lost track of how many ways guilt can sneak up on her, but it still takes her by surprise when her cheeks burn with heat and her eyes water. There’s a lump in her throat she can barely swallow around. Even after all the wars are over she doesn’t know how she’ll ever be herself again. 

 

* * *

 

She forces herself to walk down the hill on heavy feet, she wants to see for herself what their situation is. She feels eyes following her as always, but a few of the villagers nod their heads courteously and no one sharpens their weapons as she approaches. She’s not sure what to make of it yet. 

 

In the sick bay Nyko is back tending to patients with lesser ailments, with all the patients infected by Azgeda’s virus either back on their feet or dead. Lincoln is the only notable exception, his broken bones taking a little longer to heal properly. Octavia is fussing by his side, already fully back to her former strength by the looks of things. She scans the room quickly, but doesn’t immediately find who she’s looking for.

 

“The boy..?” she asks, fearing the worst. 

 

“In Arcadia,” Nyko says, and it’s all she can do to stop her jaw from dropping. “Abby’s taking care of him.”

 

“You managed to persuade his mother?” 

 

“Bellamy decided it would be safer to move him,” Nyko says, in a telling voice. “They left with the soldiers that delivered the medicine from the sky people.”

 

She nods briefly, not sure what words would escape her mouth if she opens it. She excuses herself instead, going over to the supply closet to properly assess the state of affairs. She’s pleasantly surprised to see the neat rows of bottles and boxes, small crates filled with clean bandages, swabs and syringes. There’s also far taller piles of more traditional medicine, dried red seaweed, small bundles of purple flowers Nyko uses to help patients sleep and other herbs she hasn’t seen before. Nyko obviously had some help gathering supplies and shame prickles the back of her neck as she realises Bellamy was right. As much as she hates to admit it, resources are under control, just like he said. 

 

Her stomach turns and she chokes on thin air, and she knows, _just knows_ , that no matter her objections this war is going ahead. There is going to be loss, pain and very little honour. She’s going to be burying more friends, be forced to make ever more impossible decisions. All she can do now is to work to minimise the damage, to make sure the odds are stacked a little more in their favour. Finally, her stomach revolts properly, the entire meagre contents spilling out in a tray she only just manages to grab.

 

“You’ve been doing that a lot,” Octavia says, startling her with her presence. 

 

“I’m fine,” she says, wiping her mouth inconspicuously. Octavia just raises an eyebrow at her but drops the subject.

 

“I just wanted to thank you,” Octavia says, her voice suddenly younger and smaller than she’s ever heard it. “For saving Lincoln. And for saving me too.”

 

She swallows hard, and nods her head carefully, neither of them able to hold eye contact. 

 

“I never thought I’d say that,” Octavia laughs quietly, shaking her head a little. 

 

“I’m glad you’re ok,” she smiles tentatively, and she’s surprised to find that not only is it true, it comes without reservation. 

 

“You’re a good healer _Wanheda_ ,” Octavia says, but there’s no malice behind the nickname. “I’m glad you’re on our side this time.”

 

The smile she throws her is thin but she knows it’s well meant.

 

“Terrible time though,” Octavia smirks, as she backs out of the room. “To be expecting a baby.”

 

Octavia's words echo in her ears and the smile drains from her face. She has to steady herself against the wall as she struggles to keep her balance. Her mind races, counts, counts again, counts the reasons why this can’t be happening and then counts the mounting evidence that it is. She curses herself a thousand times over for not having her implant checked before the wedding, but of course she never thought she’d be having sex afterwards and instead she was focused on all the ways the alliance would fail or on the number of ways she might be murdered in her sleep. 

 

Her eyes roam over the shelves stocked with supplies, and finally finds a small stack of simple strip tests. It wasn’t something she’d requested, but of course Abby had provided them with more than just the basics. She slips one into the sleeve of her shirt and vomits one more time before she straightens her back and hurries back up the hill. 

 

* * *

 

She stares at the strip as first one then two pink lines form, strong and unmistakable. As the colour deepens, her face pales. Her knuckles go white as she grips the edge of the table and a cold sweat spreads up her spine and flashes over her face. 

 

_Wanheda_ , commander of death, bringer of new life. It doesn’t quite fit. She’d never given children a second thought, not growing up on the Ark, not since she landed on Earth. Life seemed to have it’s own plans for her; survival came first, living never crossed her mind. 

 

It’s impossible, this pink line and what it signifies. Impossible because her currency has always been death, not life. Impossible because the deal was a political alliance, not a real marriage with a future. Impossible because her and him, they end life, they don’t start new ones. And yet, the pink line contradicts them all. 

 

Octavia was right, it’s a terrible time to be expecting a baby. Regardless of the state of her relationship with Bellamy, regardless of the potential impact on the alliance, they are going to war. Having another life to protect adds dimensions to the situation she has a hard time taking in. It makes her vulnerable, something she can’t afford to be right now. 

 

She slams her hand flat against the table, making her knife rattle loudly against the wood. She buries her face in her hands, ignoring the sting in her palm. She startles at the sound of the door closing, but before she has time to react Bellamy is there, his face tight and his eyes hard. 

 

She glances over at the strip on the table in front of her, but it’s too late to hide it now, as he already towers over the table in front of her. His eyes fall to the strip, but his face remains expressionless. He doesn’t know, she thinks, he’s never seen anything like it, has no associations. He doesn’t know the heavy significance of those two pink lines on a strip of card. Her eyes flit from the strip to his face, quickly assessing the fall out and making a quick decision.

 

“What?” he barks, oblivious. 

 

“Nothing,” she says, clearing her throat. Her cheeks are burning and must be visibly red. 

 

She should tell him, after all Octavia just guessed. How she even figured out they were sleeping together remains a mystery she’d rather not delve into right now. She knows she should tell him, because he is a part of this too, because this isn’t a secret she’ll be able to keep from him or anyone, because he deserves to know. Yet, nothing comes out of her mouth when she opens it. 

 

“Are you going to throw that at me?” he questions, eyes on the knife. “Or are you going to wait until I’m asleep?”

 

“No,” she mumbles, distracted. “ _No_.”

 

He just looks at her, exasperated, seemingly as lost for words as she is. 

 

“I’m sorry, ok?” she eventually says, avoiding his eyes. “You were right about the medicine.”

 

He’s visibly taken aback by her apology, shaking his head once as if he’s stopping himself from saying something he’ll regret.

 

“I know I was,” is all he says, his voice rough and low. 

 

“I’m not gonna throw my knife at you,” she says quickly, scooping it up and sheathing it in its holster. She grabs the strip too, shoving it in her pocket. 

 

“We’ll see,” he mutters, moving across the room to the kitchen, preparing yet another meal she’ll have to force down. 

 

And just like that, she has kept her pregnancy from the father of her child, holding up a match to a freshly constructed bridge. 

 

* * *

 

He avoids her after that, the village is a hive of activity so it’s easy for him to disappear and get swallowed up in war preparations and it’s easy for her to not feel too guilty about keeping him in the dark still. Octavia throws her sidelong glances from across rooms that she studiously avoids, but Bellamy seems none the wiser. 

 

Finally a group of Ark guards arrive with crates of guns and ammunition, and she’s forced to think about other things for a few days. Miller and his dad are part of the small group sent to help train the Trikru warriors, and she pumps him for information about life in Arkadia, to which he only gives monosyllabic answers. He does slide her the small hand piece she’d surrendered when she’d left Polis as a married woman. It instantly makes her feel better.

 

She watches uneasily as Miller explains with infinite patience how to load the chambers of the Ark issue assault rifles, how to unlatch the safety and to always aim the barrel towards the ground and away from their bodies while waiting. All things she never had time to learn before she’d been forced to use one. There was a lot of trial and error those first days, with more than a few unnecessary injuries and at least one fresh grave to dig. 

 

Now, the Trikru warriors have been equipped with rudimentary targets and rubber bullets, with Ark guards at their shoulders giving them instructions. It’s a jarring sight, and not something she easily swallows. Still, after the first round of shots there are barely any hits on the targets, and that’s almost worse. She spots Bellamy, looking unsure for the first time in his life, hands clumsily gripping the barrel and his body awkwardly slumped over the handle.

 

“Here,” she says, moving behind him and twisting his shoulders a little, adjusting his stance. “A little higher.”

 

She motions for him to lift the butt higher on his shoulder, ignoring the small, surprised glance he throws back at her. 

 

“Relax this shoulder,” she continues, reaching around him until she’s almost pressed up against his back in an embrace. 

 

She can feel the heat of his body radiating against her in the cool drizzle, the long, deep breaths he takes echoing in her ears. She leans in a fraction, as if leaning towards a hot fire, seeking heat and comfort. A beat, and then she realises what she’s doing, her hands immediately dropping to her sides, her feet taking a long step back. When he fires the gun again he almost hits the bullseye. 

 

“Yeah, just like that,” she breathes, her chest a little tight. 

 

The excited smile that spreads across his face as he turns back towards her is almost foreign on his face, makes him look younger and more boyish. It makes her briefly wonder what he looked like as a child, if he had curls back then, or if his freckles came as he grew older.

 

“Try again,” she says quickly, shaking that thought out of her head. “You need to get good at this fast.”

 

And it’s true, they all need to master this to stand a chance, and especially him. Suddenly, it’s important to her that he stays alive. 

 

* * *

 

That night, he’s done treating her as if she’s breakable. As soon as he closes the door to war, guns and strategies, he backs her onto the bed and pushes her into the mattress. When his lips glide hotly over hers she forgets why this is a bad idea. 

 

It’s been days, weeks since he touched her like he was putting out fire on her skin. The last few times between them had been hard and angry, both of them intent on inflicting pain so they could distract themselves from feeling too much. Now he slides his tongue slowly into her mouth, licks into her deliberately like he wants her to feel every inch of him.

 

She grabs onto his hair and pulls him close, inhales deeply as his scent fills her up, that sweet, heavy muskiness that is unmistakably his and makes her feel a little light headed. His hands trail a hot path up from her waist to her ribs, his thumbs sliding under her shirt and grazing the sides of her breasts gently, making goosebumps rise on her neck.

 

“Princess,” he whispers into her lips, catching her gaze, his eyes heavy lidded and dark.

 

She whines softly in response, wrapping her arms around his neck to get more of him, pulling him in to kiss him deeply.

 

She feels delirious with want when he finally pulls back a little to pull his shirt off, her eyes roaming greedily over the hard angles of his torso and her fingers instinctively tracing over the lines. He has to bat her hands away to slide her shirt over her head, and when she is exposed to him he leans back on his haunches and stares at her obscenely for so long that she starts to get uncomfortable under his hot gaze. 

 

“C’mon Bellamy,” she moans, squirming a little. “Can’t wait any longer.”

 

His smile is slow and crooked, but he takes too long to move, takes too long to give her what she needs and she starts to ache from absence. Her hands fly up to cup her breasts, fingers plucking hard at her nipples until she keens in delight.

 

“That’s right,” he rumbles, voice gravelly. “Play with your tits for me, Princess.”

 

She hears the clink of his belt buckle and the metallic scrape of his zip, and when she looks up at him he’s palming his dick slowly in his hand, long and thick and perfect. She licks her lips at the sight, wants to touch, wants to taste, but her cunt throbs impatiently. She drags her leggings down her hips, suddenly in a rush, suddenly desperate. She whines with relief when her fingers rub against her clit.

 

“Always so impatient,” he mumbles lowly, but there is something like awe in his face when she looks up at him. “Always so hot for me.”

 

The hand around his cock is already shiny with streaks of precum, the veins on his forearm popping with the strain of controlling himself. There are a few beads of sweat dotting his brow and his mouth hangs slack against his jaw.

 

“Bell...” 

 

Her breathing is so heavy it drowns out most of his name, but she likes the way it sounds, likes the way it warms her up from the inside as she slides her fingers into her pussy.

 

“ _Fuck_.” His voice is more like a growl, and tension breaks in him. He ducks down, sucking her clit into his mouth, his tongue running hard, tight circles against it. 

 

Her head snaps back almost in agony at the sensation, her fingers stuttering inside her, before she has to pull them out to steady herself against his shoulders. He flattens his tongue against her and runs a fat stripe up her slit before replacing her fingers with his. He pumps antagonisingly slow, crooking his fingers slightly and lapping lightly at her clit. Her thighs tremble and the whine in her throat turns into something deeper, more carnal.

 

“ _Clarke_ ,” he breathes, right into her cunt, the vibrations of his deep voice sending shockwaves up her spine. 

 

His fingers pick up speed while his free hand roams up her thigh, skates over her hip and spreads flat over her stomach. He closes his lips around her clit, sucking hard. The jolt of pleasure that runs through her shocks her back to reality.

 

Suddenly it’s too much, too close, too good, too intimate.

 

“Stop,” she breathes, shoving at his shoulders, pushing him away.

 

It takes him a moment to catch on, lost in her, engulfed in driving her towards her climax. She has to repeat herself a little louder, a lot sharper and shove him again before he backs off, every stroke of his finger and swipe of his tongue agonisingly satisfying. 

 

When he finally hears her he jerks off and out of her like he’s burned himself. His face is tortured and wild, shock and confusion play out on his features and his whole body slumps. He’s still painfully hard and the hurt that mar his features make her eyes sting. 

 

Words die in her throat, she doesn’t know how to explain to him that he’s making her feel too much without destroying something. She’s not sure at what point there was something there to destroy between them. 

 

His eyes widen, then narrow, and it makes something clench in her stomach. He leans over her and whispers in her ear, hard and cold. 

 

“Need something else, huh?” It’s almost a hiss.

 

He kicks her knee to the side and crushes it into the mattress with his, the metal of his belt buckle cold and sharp against her cunt. 

 

She chokes on a breath, but nods into his neck, grateful she doesn’t have to look him in the eye or that he doesn’t ask for an explanation.

 

“Say it, Princess,” he commands, teeth grazing the column of her throat. The knee holding her leg down is sharp and he leans on it with all his weight.

 

“I need you to fuck me, Bellamy,” she rasps, desperate. It’s easier to say this to him, nothing to explain, nothing to reveal. “ _Hard_.”

 

He bites down at the junction of her neck, breaking skin and bringing tears to her eyes. It feels like relief when he slams into her, the painful stretch as he tests her boundaries is like a lifeline. 

 

His hips snap and his hands grab at her wrists, pinning them down over her head. He doesn’t kiss her as he pumps into her, doesn’t caress her, doesn’t whisper her name into her ear. He groans and huffs, slides his cock hard and fast into her, bruising her leg with his knee and her wrists with his fingers. 

 

Her breath hitches and sobs every time he bottoms out, dull pain spreading across her cervix. She clenches around his cock as tight as she can, holding on to him as he sets a punishing pace. His belt buckle scrapes against her thighs and the pain soon adds to her pleasure, making her buck and arch against him. She comes hard and fast, tears leaking from her eyes and her voice hoarse around a broken shout. He follows a moment later with a deep groan, releasing her wrists and slamming a fist into the mattress hard.

 

He rolls off her, panting. Silence falls between them as they struggle to contain their breathing and racing heart beats, spent but more tense than before.

 

She tries to come up with something to say, something to soothe, to pacify without having to lay herself bare, but he beats her to the punch.

 

“You know,” he starts, voice hard and sharp. “You and me, we’re not something, but we’re not nothing either.”

 

It sounds like an accusation, and it’s meant like one. He doesn’t say anything else, just sighs deeply and covers his face with his arm. 

 

He falls asleep like that, leaving the air simmering between them, unspoken words hanging over them like overripe, rotting fruit. She falls asleep hours later, her head spinning, with one hand spread flat over her stomach.

**Author's Note:**

> if you gotta yell, come do it on [tumblr](http://insideimfeelinpurrdy.tumblr.com/)


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